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THE 
RIGHT HONOURABLE 

BENJAMIN DISRAELI, 

M.P. . U 



BY / 

GEORGE HENRY FRANCIS. 



repeinted, with additions, fe0 3i 
Feasee's Magazine. 



LONDON: 
JOHN W. PARKER AND SON, WEST STRAND. 

3IDCCCLII. 



V A & J 






LONDON: 

SAVILL AND EDWARDS, POINTERS 
CHANDOS STREET. 









. THE 

EIGHT HONOURABLE 

BENJAMIN DISRAELI, M.P. 



i. 

THE high rank attained by Mr. Disraeli among 
contemporary statesmen, and the cordial if 
tardy acknowledgment of his claims, not only as 
a man of genius, but also as a man of business, 
have effectually disposed of the charge made by 
some political thinkers, that the government of this 
country had become a sort of hereditary appanage of 
the aiistocracv. Each of the great historical par- 
ties has now given proof of a willingness to dis- 
regard the prejudice which assumed the unfitness 
of literary men to conduct important depart- 
ments of the administration. In the person of Mr. 
Macaulay, the Whigs, in that of Mr. Disraeli, 
the Tories, have set an example which there is 
good reason to believe will hereafter be followed. 
The appointment of those gentlemen to Cabinet 
Offices, and Privy Councillorships, has been at once 
a tribute to literature, and the best possible practical 
vindication of the British Constitution. 

To those who only regard the present position 
of Mr. Disraeli, forgetting his personal ante- 
cedents, and the difficulties he had to encounter in 
a 2 



4 THE RIGHT HON. BENJAMIN DISRAELI, M.P. 

the scepticism of the public, and the ingenious 
detractions of his political adversaries, it is neces- 
sary to state that in this biographical notice of his 
career, none of his earlier follies will be concealed. 
It is not by hiding the early errors of eminent 
men that service is done to their reputation : it is 
rather the contrast presented by their later years that 
raises them in public estimation. When the su- 
perabundant heat and excitability of youth have 
passed away, the traces of such extravagancies 
mark the native force of genius or character of 
which they were the evanescent ebullitions ; and it 
is notorious that mankind ever feel more respect 
for a maturity that has resulted from the gradual 
expulsion of the fiery spirit of enterprise or self- 
display, than for that less questionable steadiness 
which is but the consolidation of mediocrity. Mr. 
Disraeli's past life will bear this test ^ and, even 
more than some of his contemporaries, he gains 
in the present aspect of his character by the con- 
trast it affords to that past life; while, as even in 
his wildest escapades there was always manifested 
a noble daring, and aspirations only provocative of 
ridicule because unsupported by adequate powers, 
the confidence inspired by his later achievements 
ought not to be lessened by fears of a relapse. 
Our retrospect will cast back through many years 
of violent vicissitude. 

Pretension and presumption are so repugnant 
to the feelings of the British people, that even 
talent of a high order will be undervalued, if its 
possessor be too eager to display it. Forgetting 



OBSTACLES TO MEN OP GENIUS. 5 

that the desire for praise and admiration is the 
great spur to intellectual, exertion, we too readily 
mistake its promptings for a more ignoble habit of 
mind. The Love of Fame is often confounded with 
Vanity; and the ebullitions of an ambitious spirit 
or a luxuriant imagination are undeservedly con- 
demned as mere extravagancies of self-esteem. 
Amidst the tares and weeds, we overlook the true 
but humble shoot that struggles feebly though 
steadily to the light. We laugh at superficial 
errors and follies, because we are unable or un- 
willing to discern the germ of truth which they 
obscure. A forced and often an unnatural union 
is demanded between merit and modesty ; though 
all experience teaches us that where intellectual 
power exists, latent, perhaps, but really in greatest 
fortitude, it is often there that the most violent, 
the most ill-regulated, the most extravagant efforts 
are made for its development. Thus it is that we 
allow painstaking, humble mediocrity to deceive us, 
while we disregard its natural superior; and we 
stifle and crush many a strong aspiring spirit in 
the very throes of its young life, — if, indeed, we 
do not more frequently turn it aside into false 
channels, to expend its natural force in uncon- 
genial modes of action. It is our practical genius 
that makes us hate ideas. Whether this habit of 
mind be a right or a wrong one it matters not here; 
it is a fact. We apply the ' workhouse test' to 
all things new. If a Columbus came among us 
with the theory of a new world, we should try" 
the navigator's claims by putting him to the oar. 



6 THE RIGHT HON. BENJAMIN DISRAELI, M.P. 

There is another habit of the national mind, 
which, like this instinctive mistrust of theories and 
new ideas, affects the efforts and position of a man 
who desires to rise in the world. The English are 
suspicious of sudden success ; they value no repu- 
tation, however brilliant, if it has sprung up, 
mushroom-like, in a night. Their commercial 
habits, as well as their political experience, point 
to one* great moral rule. Slow and steady it is 
with them that wins the race. The idea of ap- 
prenticeship, realised in all trades and professions, 
pervades also their notions of political usefulness. 
If they murmur at rinding a prince of the blood 
put to the command of an invading expedition, so 
they equally object to see a new or undisciplined 
mind invested with political power, even though 
the individual so selected may be the creature of 
their own favour. It is the same in all pursuits 
of life. 

If we are obtusely dubious of a success when 
it stares us in the face, it is not surprising that 
our national prejudice should extend with still 
greater force to the effort to realise it. If we un- 
dervalue a reputation suddenly acquired, it is 
natural that we should go the length even of ridi- 
culing the attempts made to acquire it. Woe to 
the aspiring mind that will strive to reach the 
goal by any but the beaten path ! At every 
deviation he will meet impassable barriers; and 
every successful obstruction of his efforts will be 
hailed with exulting laughter by the unsympathis- 
ing multitude, while he will himself be thrust back 



HOW TO SUCCEED IN PARLIAMENT. 7 

again to the very rear. "We have been so often 
taken in by charlatans and impostors, both in 
politics and literature, that our natural magna- 
nimity and generosity have become absorbed in a 
necessary selfishness ; and we shew a remorseless 
want of pity for the extravagancies of an exu- 
berant mind, if its ambition be too great to put 
itself in harness, and submit to that training by 
which it can alone become strengthened and con- 
solidated. In the House of Commons, this dis- 
position to enjoy the discomfiture of pretension is 
concentrated until it perpetually forces itself into 
action. They will bow deferentially before a 
master-mind, one of the conditions of superiority 
being the possession of a tact sufficient to avoid 
glaring failures. On the other hand, they will 
cherish the slightest indications of merit or of 
intellectual power, if they are put forward mo- 
destly and without pretension. But they are 
unmerciful towards those who would seek to take 
them by storm without having the requisite ma- 
teriel. There are many living instances of gentle- 
men who have been utterly cowed and put down, 
laughed into perpetual silence, in consequence of 
some unlucky flight of halting rhetoric, but who 
are in mind immeasurably superior to those by 
whom they were sacrificed. Unless men who are 
ambitious of distinction will make themselves 
masters of what may be termed the mechanics of 
oratory and statesmanship, the highest powers of 
mind will be lost upon the House of Commons. 
To succeed there, every man must to a certain 



8 THE RIGHT HON. BENJAMIN DISRAELI, M.P. 

extent be an actor — must merge his individuality 
in some specific character, which he must strive to 
impress as a whole upon the general mind of the 
House. And the line, which he thus may mark 
out for himself, must be one tending to some prac- 
tical result, either as regards legislative usefulness, 
or its effect on political combinations. Mere ab- 
stract theories of policy or government find a deaf 
ear in the House of Commons. So also will the 
most novel ideas, the most brilliant metaphors, 
the most sterling enthusj^sm, unless used in fur- 
therance of some tangible, intelligible object. A 
young thinker, fresh from the schools or the libra- 
ries, may indulge in his day-dreams of legislative 
perfectibility, or may strive to impress the 
representatives and rulers of the nation with more 
exalted ideas of their functions, and of true policy 
of state ; but if he be not met at the very outset 
with overpowering ridicule, he will at least be 
treated with that chilling neglect, that scarcely 
concealed contempt, which comfortable, complacent 
mediocrity has always at hand for any manifesta- 
tions of that genius which it so ignobly hates. 
But if the very same man who thus fails in his 
more exalted aim, descends into the arena equipped 
for combat, and by planting one or two successful 
blows on an antagonist shews that he is, by ever 
so little, a proficient in the science which espe- 
cially finds favour in a debating society, he may 
thenceforth bring forward his ideas and his 
theories in whatever shape he will, so that they 
have a practical bearing; and the very same 



views which, under other circumstances, would 
expose him to ridicule, will now procure him 
attentive listening, and, in all probability, party- 
alliances, if not personal converts. 

It would seem to be a species of instinct 
which prompts the English to be thus suspicious 
of all novelty. This habitual mistrust applies in 
a marked manner to public men. However able 
as an advocate or as a leader, an aspirant to office 
has to overcome a primary difficulty in an inert 
opposition. The public have never been accus- 
tomed to associate his name with a ministerial 
position ; and he labours for the time being under 
nearly as much disfavour as if he had been proved 
incapable. A sagacious chancellor lifts a stuff- 
gownsman from the back row to the judgment- 
seat ; a large-minded premier converts an Oxford 
student and divinity-man into a commerce and 
finance minister, or manufactures a working mem- 
ber of the. Board of Trade out of a newspaper 
editor; a pupil and protege of a great historical 
party rises by rotation to its leadership while in 
opposition, and glides naturally into the premier- 
ship when the wheel of fortune turns up that luck : 
all these personages have long since earned by 
approved ability their novel positions ; yet to the 
sceptical eye of John Bull, they are still invested 
with all the suspicious characteristics of 'new 
men/ and are set down in his own secret mind as 
incapables. But office sanctifies. One season in 
Downing Street or in Westminster Hall dissipates 
the cloud of prejudice against them; and our 



10 THE RIGHT HON. BENJAMIN DISRAELI, M.P. 

good public are now as ready to take them upon 
trust, to invest them with all imaginable qualities 
of the lawyer, the legislator, or the statesman, as 
before they begrudged even the most ordinary 
allowance of confidence. 

Mr. Disraeli, throughout his eccentric career, 
has singularly exemplified the operation of these 
prejudices, and the truth of those propositions. 
If we look back at the many brilliant productions 
of his pen, that for more than twenty years have 
been the delight of his contemporaries (not only 
his fellow-subjects, but also the natives of every 
country in the civilised portion of the globe), we 
shall be struck with astonishment that he should 
have held, until a comparatively recent period, so 
low a place in the opinion of the great mass of 
his countrymen ; that his name should have been 
associated with ideas of egotism, vanity, pretension, 
extravagance, and crudity never to be matured; 
and that not only as a party man should he have been 
regarded as unsafe, but that as a political thinker 
he should have been held to be unsound. For 
unquestionably through these various publications, 
whether works of fiction or political demonstra- 
tions, there were scattered passages not surpassed 
by any contemporary writer ; and clear, intelligible 
ideas of policy, which ought to have commanded 
attention, if only that they might be discussed, and, 
if possible, refuted. On the other hand, it is 
equally a reason for surprise, the contrasted posi- 
tion of Mr. Disraeli, when, in the session of 1840, 
he drew off in triumph from his prolonged contest 






HIS EARLY CAREER. 



11 



with Sir Robert Peel, with that in which he was 
in the year 1837, when he consummated the most 
egregious and ridiculous failure, the same amount 
of abilities being assumed, that had ever befallen 
any man in the House of Commons. 

To account for these contradictions, and at the 
same time to trace the causes of his continued 
political proscription, as well as his deferred suc- 
cess, it will be necessary to cast a backward glance 
at the main events of his literary and political life. 
The temptation to smile — nay, even to indulge in 
a good English guffaw (which in these days of 
superficial refinement has become a rare and dan- 
gerous indulgence), will from time to time be great; 
but in watching the Protean efforts of Mr. Disraeli 
to slip in many false characters into the Temple of 
Fame, we shall strive not to lose sight of the 
remarkable fact, that at the yery eleventh hour, 
when he was supposed to have burnt out all his 
natural fire, and to have c gone out/ like many 
other eccentric human pyrotechnics, with a most 
unsavoury odour, he should suddenly have shot up 
again with renewed life and brilliancy, and have 
attained a perfection as a debater which has had 
no parallel since the genius of Canning ceased to 
illumine the dull atmosphere of senatorial medio- 
crity with the fitful flashes of his incomparable wit. 

II. 

AVERY few facts will suffice to introduce the 
public career of Mr. Disraeli to the reader. It 



12 THE RIGHT HON. BENJAMIN DISRAELI, M.P. 

is known to all the world that he is the son of the 
late Mr. Disraeli, the author of the Curiosities of 
Literature and other household books. The future 
orator and statesman was born in the year 1806. 
His childhood was characterised by a singular pre- 
cocity of talent — a premature development of the 
faculty of observation. In his adolescence he 
was subjected to the severe corrective of a city life. 
The future Chancellor of the Exchequer spent in 
the hard service of a lawyer's office much of the 
time he would rather have devoted to the muses. 
We do not consider ourselves called on to enter 
into mere gossiping details, however interesting, of 
this period of Mr. Disraeli's career. His native 
genius soon broke through those trammels. 

' Mr. Disraeli would have been successful at an ear- 
lier stage in his career, if he had had less cleverness 
and more craft. An ambition disproportioned to 
his position inspired him with preposterous hopes 
and aims ; and an unfortunate gift of the power of 
satire supplied him at once with the temptation 
and the means of securing a sudden and too easy 
notoriety. He has always been in a hurry to be a 
great man. It has been his error to have, from 
time to time, overlooked the wide gulf, the toilsome 
and laborious interval, between the conception of 
a grand idea, the creation of a comprehensive 
theory, and its realisation. He has achieved the 
most brilliant triumphs, in imagination; in act, he 
has sustained almost as many defeats. He would 
always be himself alone. He was his own 
General, his own Army, his own Gazette to record 
his victories. He never served. He must always 



' VIVIAN GREY.' 13 

be a leader, even of imaginary troops; prince, of 
pven the pettiest royalty. Not really more of an 
egotist than many men around him who possessed 
more cunning, it was always his misfortune to ap- 
pear intensely egotistical. As John Bull is a great 
leveller where individual vanity is concerned, this 
habit of mind was fatal to Mr. Disraeli in public 
opinion. The temptation to laugh in return at the 
man who was the satirist of all around him, was 
irresistible. Unfortunately, he has given too many 
opportunities. In a series of dashing assaults on 
the portals of the Temple of Fame, in his earlier 
. political life, he has only once or twice come off 
signally victorious. Either his undertaking has 
been too great for his powers, or his powers, 
strong in themselves, have been so ill-disciplined S§ 
to have become worse than weak. In the many 
attempts of his vigorous vanity to make a position 
for himself, it is remarkable in what a variety of 
different shapes his mind has sought expression. 
As a romance writer, a political and social satirist, 
newspaper editor, pamphleteer, poet, orator, he has 
from time to time betrayed how great were his 
aims, while he has seldom succeeded in completely 
attaining them. A trap was laid for his vain- 
glorious spirit at the very outset of his career. At 
the risk of being paradoxical, we would say that 
all his after failures were owing to his first success. 
It has taken him nearly twenty years to get over its 
effects on his too ardent and susceptible mind. 

The appearance of Vivian Grey (Mr. Disraeli's 
first published work of any magnitude), in the year 
1828, caused a great excitement in the literary 



14 THE RIGHT HON. BENJAMIN DISRAELI, M.P. 

world. The book was eagerly read. The bold 
handling, and almost reckless power ; the views of 
society, if often impudently false, still strikingly 
original and coherent; the graphic portraiture; 
the dashing satire and glowing sentiment with 
which its pages abounded, supplied an irresistible 
stimulus to the literary appetite of the day, till, 
although the wise condemned and the critical 
sneered, those who read only for amusement were 
delighted, and there were not wanting many of 
good authority who saw in this first shoot of a 
young intellect the germs of future vigour and 
strength. It is not our province, in this sketch, to 
enter into any critical analysis of the purely lite- 
rary portion.efMr. Disraeli's works. Their beauties 
M&t defects have been sufficiently ascertained from 
time to time as they appeared. But, in another 
respect, they come within the scope of our plan ; 
for they have, almost without an exception, a political 
bearing. In Vivian Grey, itself, we find the germ 
of much of the subsequent fruition of Mr. Disraeli's 
mind. It is more than probable that he was in 
imagination the hero of his own tale ; for he has 
there created an atmosphere, and called characters 
into existence, such as would form the world in 
which he would delight, could he have the making 
of it. Throughout his political life Mr. Disraeli has 
been looking out for a Marquis de Car abas, whom 
he could make the lever of his ambition, the ac- 
complice of his spasmodic patriotism. The author 
struggled convulsively to retain his uncertain 
tenure ; but there was at that time no sound basis 



JONTARINI FLEMING. 



and lie was almost tlie last to 
vital weakness. The faults of Vivian 
me, in some subsequent works, exagge- 
clegree of absurdity utterly incomprehen- 
hen we look at the literary perfection, and, 
es, at the severe taste, of some of the later 
_jpluctions of the same mind. These extravagances 
Kr **, more glaring in his non-political works. His 
,arini Fleming, or, as he afterwards styled it, 
The Psychological Romance, in spite of its super- 
ficial views and flashy sentiment, its false colouring 
and exaggerated tone, exhibited unquestionable 
power and striking originality; and in those por- 
j.ons in which court and political intrigues were 
itched and diplomatic character portrayed, there 
as much satirical force and vigour of 
any of the scenes in Vivian Grey. 
.sa me unconscious, or, perhaps, 
Eenjamin Dis?!^^^L^r the same idealising of 
deeds, the same ^m^^^^o^ person, and his 
in imagination, of astonishing iUs^^ ruling men 
theories, of being all-in-all with kings ana «v an( j 
ters, that have ever characterised the intellectual 
efforts of this brilliant but too ambitious politician, 
and have made him overlook, from time to time, 
all those barriers which the real, unpoetical world 
opposed to his vaulting spirit. As a purely lite- 
rary work, if, like the pictures of some of our 
living artists, it was designed and coloured to gra- 
tify the false taste of a contemporary public, it at 
least deserves the praise of being consistent with 



L6 THE RIGHT HON. BENJAMIN DJ 



itself, whilst its exuberant imagery ail 
diction render it at once an exciting ; 
ful stimulant to the imagination. For 
purpose it is chiefly valuable as being, in ^ 
to which we have referred, a reflection 
author's political feelings at the time he w 
If, in Vivian Grey, Mr. Disraeli must be .suspec 
of having imagined for himself facile and brillial 
triumphs on the domestic stage of politics, so, in ] 
Psychological Romance, he seems to have indulged 
in grand reveries, of which foreign countries and 
politics were tke scene, till one might almost fancy 
him, in his own conceit, Consul-general everywhere, 
and Plenipotentiary to all the rulers of the earthy 
But the Wondrous Tale of Alroy, and an aiior 
lous twin-birth of the same date, brought the^ 
of Mr. Disraeli to their climax. ThaL 
universally hailed as a damning eYii 
lunacy. Wild, incongruou^^^^^n l° s ^ sight 
tamperings with histgfji*^^ Eastern colouring ; 
of in the briUis* -,l '^^^ : empts to reconstruct the 
but th^- a °g ua S e ~^ ma ke Da cl poetry do duty as 
Y mimical prose, till the writer seemed to be lite- 
rally cantering through his work, raised an uni- 
versal shout of derision. It was more than good 
John Bull, though apt enough to admire the un- 
intelligible, could bear. He flung down the book 
with feelings more of pity than even of disgust, 
and would, with the most conscientious feelings, 
have consigned the author to literary restraint. 
Yet did Mr. Disraeli perpetrate one more offence 



'the revolutionary epic/ 17 

)f a kindred order, if there be any natural affinity 
)etween mad poetry and mad prose. He made 
e more valorous invasion of tlie realms of 
nmon sense ere his literary ardour became di- 
?ted into more recognised channels. He now 
ired to be the poet of his age. It seems that 
had been a Wanderer for some space of time, 
)rief to common men, but to him an age, in the 
nultitude of impressions it produced; until one 
lay he found himself, in Asia Minor, or among 
he Pyramids, or in some other equally poetical 
tnd uncomfortable place. The promptings of a 
liseased vanity, which he seems to have mistaken 
br the divine afflatus, determined him to become 
i great poet — to be the interpreter of his era. 
Musing, he thought aloud, ' The poet hath ever 
embodied the spirit of his time ; ' c and/ whispered 
;he voice of the tempter, ' Benjamin Disraeli still 
ives.' Again he mused in speech. ' The most 
leroic incident of an heroic age produced in the 
Iliad an heroic Epic ; the Consolidation of the most 
superb of empires produced in the JEneid a Poli- 
tical Epic ; the Revival of Learning and the Birth 
[)f Vernacular Genius give us, in the Divine 
Comedy, a National Epic; and the Reformation 
and its consequences called from the rapt Lyre of 
Milton a Religious Epic/ And then, with retro- 
spective eye, in no doubt very fine frenzy rolling, 
he reviews the half century of contending principles 
of government, from the outbreak of the French 
Revolution, and seeing that its heroes — from 
Robespierre and Napoleon down to Joseph Hume 



18 THE RIGHT HON. BENJAMIN DISRAELI, M.P. 

and John Frost — have had no one to build the lofty- 
rhyme on their behalf, he suddenly exclaims, c For 
Me remains the Revolutionary Epic/ And straigh/ 
way he rushes back to Europe, and publishes i 
imposing quarto his inspirations, entitling ther 
with unparalleled assurance, The Revolutionary Epic 
the work of Disraeli the Younger, author of Tht 
Psychological Romance. In the preface, where he 
has recorded the foregoing musings, he adds, that 
the book is only a part of a greater whole ; that he 
submits it to the judgment of the public, not being 
one of those who can find consolation for the neg- 
lect of contemporaries in the imaginary plaudits of 
a more sympathetic posterity. With a candour and 
resignation ill according with his magniloquent 
announcement, he adds, 'that if the decision of 
the public should be in the negative, then will he, 
without a pang, hurl his Lyre to Limbo/ As the 
remainder of the poem has never been heard of,} 
let us hope that the poet has been as good as his 
ord. 

It is not with any malicious feeling that we thus 
recall to memory the extravagancies of this per- 
severing satirist of other men's follies. LTnless we 
do so, it will be impossible to get over the contrast 
between Mr. Disraeli as he is, and the personage 
who appeared before the public as Disraeli the 
Younger. The Revolutionary Epic, however, in 
spite of an extravagant and incongruous machinery, 
and a misapprehension, as we conceive, of the very 
spirit and object of poetical art, possesses, inde- 
pendent of some occasional beauties, and some 



f HENRIETTA TEMPLE.' 19 

passages of great power, an interest in connexion 
with our present purpose. When the feeling of 
the ludicrous has subsided, and the few fine pas- 
sages in the poem have been separated from the 
flashy philosophy and ambitious commonplace with 
which it abounds, it will be found to contain the 
outline of intelligible and consistent views of human 
affairs, and more especially the germ of those 
peculiar political opinions which Mr. Disraeli, in 
later years, both as a writer and an orator, has ad- 
vocated amidst so much ridicule, with so much 
success. The general principle of a party, few in 
number but rich in talent, and who have been 
hitherto undervalued, will be found in this remark- 
able and extravagant production; and Mr. Disraeli's 
ideas of Young Englandism, as afterwards explain- 
ed in Coningsby and Sybil, are here struggling into 
light amidst many weed-like absurdities. This is 
one of the evidences, whereof we shall accumulate 
more as we go on, of the consistency and sincerity of 
Mr. Disraeli — as a political thinker. There are 
other works of a purely literary character written by 
j Mr. Disraeli, — novels, plays, poems, and satirical 
sketches, — with which the reader is doubtless 
: familiar. 

I Of Henrietta Temple (published in November, 
! 1836), an accomplished critic observes that it 
j is ' one of the most agreeable love-stories ever 
written/ In May, of the following year, Mr. Dis- 
raeli published another novel, which he entitled 
Venetia. Its chief interest is derived from an ad- 
mirable delineation of the respective characters of 

b 2 



20 THE RIGHT HON. BENJAMIN DISR4ELI, M.P. 

Lord Byron and Shelley, under the names of 
Cadurcis and Herbert. In June, 1839, appeared 
Alarcos>& tragedy ; and five years after, the public 
were charmed with Coningsby, a work which may be 
said to have initiated a new species of fiction, which 
combines with the ordinary interest of a romance, 
the discussion of contemporary politics, and the 
still more interesting social problems of the epoch. 
This work was speedily followed by two kindred 
productions, Sybil and Tancred. Mr. Disraeli 
also published an edition of one of his father's 
works ; and the well-known Political Biography of 
Lord George Bentinck. 



III. 



npHE political career of Mr. Disraeli has been as 
J- eccentric as his literary life, and his pretensions 
as presumptuous. The feverish excitement of the 
Reform agitation could not but communicate itself 
to so ardent a spirit. It seems that while that 
agitation was in process, and until its final con- 
summation, he was absent from England on his 
travels in different parts of Europe and the East. 
In 1832 he returned to England; and the same 
inordinate ambition which led him to aspire to be 
the poet of his age, drew him at once with con- 
fidence into the political arena. To judge from 
the nature of his proceedings, it would seem as if 
he thought that he had but to shew himself — that 
he had but to announce, with trumpet and gong, 



STARTS AS A ' RADICAL.' 21 

the return of Disraeli the Younger from the 
Pyramids, in order to be at once the shining light 
of the day, to be courted as a leadef, or at least as 
a coadjutor, by political parties. { With a love of 
violent contrasts, quite in keeping with the general 
character of his literary works, he formed at once 
a most singular political alliance. Finding 'a 
House of Commons packed, and the independence 
of the House of Lords announced as having ter- 
minated, he saw the country in the very danger it 
had escaped from by a miracle a century before 
— that of being bound hand and foot, and in the 
power of the Whigs. 5 Where all other men in 
the nation were in terror of a rampant democracy, 
he, Disraeli the Younger, saw only an impending 
oligarchy. Therefore he determined to oppose the 
Whigs, or, in his own phrase, to grapple with the 
great Leviathan. But if he would not join the 
Whigs, with what party should he act ? Not the 
Tories ! No, not -with them, by any means. 
Why ? Was it that they had no illustrious men 
at their head? no leaders, of world-wide reputa- 
tion, who, by their conquests in the field, in di- 
plomacy and the senate, had proved their title to 
conduct public affairs, and their right to form a 
judgment on the position of their party ? No ; 
it was because Disraeli the Y r ounger found them 
in a state of ' ignorant stupefaction/ haunted with 
nervous apprehension of that e great bugbear, the 
People — that bewildering title, under w r hich a 
miserable minority contrive to coerce and plun- 
der a nation/ because they e fancied that they 



22 THE RIGHT HON. BENJAMTN DISRAELI, M.P. 

were on the eve of a reign of terror, when they 
were about to sink under the sovereignty of a 
Council of Ten/ because, in fine, they — that is 
to say a Wellington, a Peel, a Lyndhurst — were 
''ignorant' that they who had led the nation so 
long were ' the nation's natural leaders f and be- 
cause Disraeli the Younger, just come back from 
the East, w$s so disgusted at their indolent im- 
becility, that he positively refused to lend them his 
assistance in recovering their lost power. Then 
what shape was this hot and eager spirit to assume ? 
He could not be a Whig; he would not be a Tory; 
so there was no alternative for him but to be a 
Radical. 

And a Radical he straightway became ; not, 
however, the sort of Radical to which John Bull 
has been accustomed; for the soaring spirit that 
had conceived the Revolutionary Epic was not to 
be chained in submission to any defined opinions 
or course of policy. His Radicalism consisted, ap- 
parently, of tw r o elements — a desire to get into 
parliament any how, and a well simulated hatred 
of the Whigs, because abusing them afforded scope 
for fine writing, and for displaying a knowledge of 
constitutional history. One evidence of modesty 
on the part of Mr. Disraeli at this period deserves 
to be recorded. He did not offer himself as a 
candidate for the City of London; nor did he 
wait till a deputation from Yorkshire came to 
offer him a requisition and support. He actually 
went down to the small borough of High Wy- 
combe, in the neighbourhood of which his father's 



GOES TO HIGH WYCOMBE. 23 

estate lay, and offered himself to tlie constituents, 
who, good wondering people, tried all they pos- 
sibly could to understand him. But they were 
completely puzzled by this Oriental apparition. 
Mr. Disraeli had, however, so far adopted common 
mundane precautions as to seek some support and 
recommendation from the chief Liberals of the 
day. Whether he sought it himself or got Sir 
Edward Bulwer to do it for him, is a matter of 
small importance, the fact being, that whatever 
might be his mental reservation, he was at that 
time ostensibly identified with the Radical party. 
Mr. O'Connell and Mr. Hume were applied to for 
recommendations. Neither of them had any per- 
sonal influence in the borough; but the latter 
sent, through Sir Edward Bulwer, a written cha- 
racter of Mr. Disraeli, in which he recommended 
him generally to the good-will of the electors. 
Such a passport from the then great Warwick of 
the radical party almost amounted to a mandate, 
and possibly Mr. Disraeli might have succeeded, 
but that Mr. Hume seems meanwhile to have 
discovered that his Radicalism went no further 
than partisan hatred to the Whigs ; that, in fact, 
he was only a Tory in disguise. Mr. Hume 
thereupon commenced a more active canvass for 
the Whig candidates; and the result was that 
Colonel Grey and his Whig colleague were re- 
turned, Mr. Disraeli being defeated by the former 
with a small difference of numbers. The game he 
played at Wycombe was a shrewd and significant 
one. He strove to unite the Tories and the 



24 THE RIGHT HON. BENJAMIN DISRAELI, M.P. 

Radicals against the Whigs, thus neutralising dissi- 
milarity of opinions by identity of hatreds. "We 
shall see that this idea has been often reproduced 
by Mr. Disraeli ; and that what was at first in- 
tended as a purely partisan combination, has been 
fused by his creative faculty into an intelligible 
scheme of policy. 

One exhibition made by Mr. Disraeli at this 
period of his life is too rich an example of the 
truth of our theory of his character to be passed 
over. We question whether the boldest adven- 
turer in political history ever made so daring an 
assault on the common sense of his countrymen. 
It was about the time to which we have just 
referred that the advertisement sheet of the morn- 
ing papers contained rather a startling announce- 
ment. It consisted of one line, of three words ; 
and those words were, * What is He ?' Curiosity 
was excited to know who c He } was ; and Hat- 
chard's shop was straightway besieged with cus- 
tomers who spent sixpence in buying a small 
pamphlet, which, when they had bought it, they 
could not understand. The enigma, however, was 
partially explained. It seems that somebody or 
other had called the attention of Mr. Disraeli to 
a question incidentally asked by Earl Grey, the 
then prime minister, as to what were the political 
opinions of one who had, in various ways, made 
so much noise in the world. It was a very 
natural question, even for the astute Whig 
leader to ask, for at that time Mr. Disraeli's po- 
litical foresight was looked upon as so much am- 



' WHAT IS HE V 25 

bitious folly. The sterling truth of some of his 
opinions, and the value of his prophetic denun- 
ciations of "Whig oligarchical ambition, were over- 
looked in the ridicule excited by his presumptuous 
and pretentious mode of announcing them. It is 
possible that Earl Grey took so little interest in 
the subject of his casual question, as never to 
have read this answer. If he had, he might 
have met in its pages, certainly in a bizarre and 
extravagant shape, much that it would have been 
worth the while of his party to have thought 
deeply upon. Aware of their own c grasping' plans, 
they might have detected what to others was 
hidden — an under-current of common sense, as 
well as of political vaticination, in the hot thoughts 
and flaming periods which the author of the 
pamphlet poured, like so many streams of lava, 
through his pages. But to the million, and 
especially to the constituencies of that day, be- 
sotted as they were with the most extravagant 
hopes from their rulers, it was utterly unintelligible. 
The strange presumptuous shape in which it ap- 
peared, confirmed all previous impressions that 
had been formed of its author, and it was looked 
upon only as the latest and most glaring instance 
of his overweening and impracticable vanity. In 
postponing our notice of this publication to that 
of The Revolutionary Epic, we have anticipated 
dates; but the latter seems, from internal evi- 
dence, to have been conceived, and possibly written, 
before the pamphlet, which was a sudden spirit of 
temporary excitement, forgotten almost as soon 



26 THE RIGHT HON. BENJAMIN DISRAELI, M.P. 

as published. It is now out of print. The next 
attempt of Mr. Disraeli to attain political position 
was when, soon after these last occurrences, an 
election was expected for Marylebone. He might 
not have been so far wrong in his calculation, had 
he been able to persist in his attempt ; for expe- 
rience has shown how capricious the worthy 
electors of that borough are in their inclinations 
and attachments. The expected election never 
took place; but Mr. Disraeli committed himself 
quite as much as if it had. He canvassed some 
of the electors, and among others called upon his 
old friend Mr. Hume. His object at this time 
was to get in on the Radical interest; and he 
still persisted in his Vivian Grey-ish manoeuvre, 
of trying to make a partisan Tory's hatred of 
Whiggisni pass off as honest, wholesome Radi- 
calism. At Wycombe he had proposed a bare- 
faced coalition between the two extremes of poli- 
tical parties ; but by this time he had learned to 
gloss over the startling contrasts of so crude an 
alliance, and had succeeded, by laying on his 
original design a thick coating of historical var- 
nish, to produce what looked rather like a high- 
toned picture. This accession of artistic power 
soon developed itself in one or two political works, 
which displayed much more soundness, steadiness 
of purpose, and maturity of judgment, than his 
previous manifestoes. He had by this time begun 
to curb his Pegasus. In an address to the 
electors of High Wycombe, which was afterwards 
published with the title of The Crisis Examined, 



' THE CRISIS EXAMINED/ 27 

he more distinctly shadows forth that scheme of 
Anti-Whig Liberalism, of Tory Radicalism, of 
Absolutism and well-governing combined, which 
formed the only intelligible portion of the theories 
of the Young England party. There is more 
power and less extravagance in this production of 
his pen, than in any previous political publication; 
and, much as the Whigs still affected to despise 
him, they must have smarted under the ridicule 
here poured on them as a party. The germ of 
that power of ludicrous illustration with which he 
has since so often convulsed the House of Com- 
mons, may be found in his description of the 
then state of the Whig party, deserted as they 
had been by all the great men of the Reform 
agitation, whose places were filled by shadows of 
statesmen. Referring to Duerow's popular per- 
formance of ' The St. Petersburgh Courier/ where 
he rode six horses at once, he supposes that the 
nobler quadrupeds one by one fall sick, or have 
the 'staggers/ and are replaced by long-eared 
substitutes, the humblest of the equine order, 
though still from day to day the original six 
horses are advertised to run, and the public go, 
believing they shall see them. They put up with 
the deception for one, two, three, four days, until 
at last the game can be carried on no longer; the 
adventurous equestrian cannot manage his asinine 
steeds ; the deception explodes ; and Mr. Merri- 
man himself, who, like the Lord Chancellor 
(Brougham), was once the life of the ring, now 
lies his despairing length in the middle of the 



28 THE RIGHT HON. BENJAMIN DISRAELI, M.P. 

stage, with his jokes exhausted and his bottle 
empty. We have not the passage at hand to 
quote, but the language is felicitous, and the 
illustration was, at that particular time, singularly 
apt and ludicrous. 

The year 1835 was with Mr. Disraeli one of 
more than even his ordinary activity. He was 
perpetually blowing his trumpet, from its com- 
mencement to its close. The accession of Sir 
Robert Peel to power in November 1834, and the 
prospect of consolidation and united action in the 
Conservative party, led to a reasonable hope that 
Mr. Disraeli might be able to ride into parliament 
on their shoulders. So he leapt with a graceful 
facility off his old hobby, on to his new one. He 
boldly flung aside his mask of Radicalism, and 
came out a full-blown Tory. With his usual 
ambition, he again flew at high game; — went 
down to Taunton to oppose no less a person than 
Mr. Labouchere. In a subsequent explanation of 
his conduct, to which we shall have occasion again 
to refer, he maintains that his principles were still 
the same as when, a quasi Radical, three years 
before, he started for Wycombe; but that now 
the position of things was altered. He was now 
an earnest partisan of the Tories (by the by, 
Mr. Disraeli has an affected tenacity of old party 
names), because, under the guidance of their elo- 
quent and able leader (his notions of Sir Robert 
Peel's talents were very different then from what 
they have been since), the principles of primitive 
Toryism had again developed themselves. With a 



ATTEMPTS TAUNTON AS A TORY. 29 

boldness of assertion, which shewed him oblivious 
to the common sense of mankind, he declared that 
in no longer advocating short parliaments and the 
ballot, he was not succumbing to the prejudices of 
his new allies ; but that he abandoned those poli- 
tical specifics, because he now discovered less 
chance of an oligarchical tyranny; the power of 
the Whigs having been checked, and the balance 
of power more restored. The British public, 
heaven knows, are not wanting in party spirit; 
but so sudden a change of side, on such abstract 
grounds, they could not comprehend. It seemed 
to them simple, shameless inconsistency. Mr. 
Disraeli's conduct raised him still more active and 
implacable enemies. By this 4 time Whigs and 
Radicals had been compelled to make common 
cause with each other against their Conservative 
enemy : and there was no longer any reason why 
they should be tender with their former neophyte 
and would-be ally. On all sides the vials of 
wrath were poured upon him. This was just the 
very thing he liked. It gave full employment 
to his combative spirit. He was always up and 
in his armour, with lance in rest — always had his 
hobby superbly caparisoned, ready to bear him 
to all sorts of victorious combats with imaginary 
antagonists. 

Mr. Disraeli, with a courage which, considering 
his antecedents, must be pronounced audacious, 
issued the first challenge. In the report which 
appeared of his speech on the hustings at Taunton, 
towards the end of April 1835, he was represented 



80 THE RIGHT HON. BENJAMIN DISRAELI, M.P. 

as having made a grossly scurrilous attack on 
Mr. O' Connelly calling him, among other choice 
epithets, ' Incendiary/ and ' Traitor/ and declaring 
that he was a c Liar in action and in word/ that c in 
his life he was a living lie/ It is needless to say that 
the great agitator w T as not the man to be outdone in 
coarse abuse. As usual, however, with him, what 
was grossly rude in his reply, was relieved by some 
touches of broad humour. A practical man like 
O'Connell would have a natural contempt for one 
whom he regarded as being only a flashy theorist; 
and, in addition, he bore him a strong antipathy on 
religious grounds, in consequence of his Hebrew 
origin, which for some reason (perhaps connected 
with mortgages) is a source of odium in Ireland. On 
the 2nd of May following, O'Connell fulminated a 
characteristic counter-attack, in which he fell upon 
his antagonist's inconsistencies, taunting him with 
hating repaid by the foulest calumny the assist- 
ance he had given him at Wycombe ; that 'having 
failed at Wycombe and Marylebone as a Radical 
Reformer, he now came out as a Conservative, and 
considered himself Tory enough to assume the 
leadership of the Tory party instead of Peel / and 
then, having denounced him as a humbug of the 
first magnitude, he wound up with a coarse but ad- 
hesive piece of abusive sarcasm, in which, referring 
to the origin of Mr. Disraeli's family, he said, ' He 
had no doubt, if his genealogy were traced, it would 
be found that he was the true heir-at-law of the 
impenitent thief who atoned for his crimes on the 
cross/ The public laughed, in spite of some 



81 



disgust, at this piece of Swift-like humour, which 
they, perhaps, thought had been provoked by Mr. 
Disraeli, partly by his personal attacks, and partly 
by his audacious political inconsistency. The per- 
sonalities stung Mr. Disraeli to madness. The 
Agitator, he knew, would not fight ; therefore, on 
the principle of hereditary revenge, Mr. Disraeli 
sought to fight his family. He began with Mr. 
Morgan O'Connell; but that young gentleman, 
knowing, perhaps, his father's peculiarities, hesi- 
tated to establish so absurd and inconvenient a pre- 
cedent. Their correspondence was duly published 
in the Times, and, if we mistake not, Mr. Disraeli 
waa bound over to keep the peace. Debarred of 
his revenge by the pistol, he expended his wrath 
through his pen. In a letter to O^Connell, 
couched in terms of bombastic magniloquence, 
quite worthy of the author of What is He ? and 
the Revolutionary Epic, he declared that if the 
Agitator could have acted like a gentleman, he 
would have hesitated to have made foul and inso- 
lent comments on a garbled and hasty report of 
his speech, which scarcely contained a sentence or 
an expression as they had emanated from his mouth. 
But the truth was, he said, that O'Connell was 
only too happy to pour venom on a man whom 
it was the interest of a party to represent as a 
political apostate. That epithet he indignantly 
disavowed. Concealing for the time his pro- 
Radical attempts, he would have it that he had 
from the first come forward only as the avowed 
enemy of the Whigs, whom he had then de- 



32 THE RIGHT HON. BENJAMIN DISRAELI, M.P. 

nounced as a rapacious, tyrannical and incapable 
faction. Not having the fear of Mr. Hume or 
those mute witnesses, the newspaper files, before 
his eyes, he went on to deny that he had ever 
deserted a political friend, or changed a political 
opinion. He then alluded to the only interview 
he had had up to that time with O'Connell, 
saying, with retrospective candour, that he then 
thought him an overrated man, but that he had 
plainly told him, personally, that his agitation for 
Repeal would make it impossible that they could 
co-operate. In retorting O^ConnelFs scurrilous 
allusions, he says, ' It is quite clear that the here- 
ditary bondsman has already forgotten the clank 
of his fetter. I know the tactics of your Church : 
it clamours for Toleration and it labours for Supre- 
macy. I see that you are prepared to persecute/ 
and then, after drawing a strong contrast between 
his own unaided position and O'ConnelFs extorted 
appliances for power, he wound up with the 
magnificent boast, 'We shall meet at Philippi, 
where I will seize the first opportunity of inflict- 
ing castigation for the insults you have lavished 
upon me/ Having discharged himself of this 
diatribe, some of the worst parts of which we 
have omitted, Mr. Disraeli wrote a letter to Mr. 
Morgan O'Connell, in which he expresses a 
charitable hope that he has so insulted his father 
that some member of the family must come for- 
ward and avenge him. The sons of O'Connell, 
however, looked on the matter as purely ridicu- 
lous ; and they only published the correspondence 



'will meet o'conxell at philippic 33 

in the papers. The public were much of the 
same opinion. They indulged in a good hearty- 
laugh at the Cambyses' vein of the would-be 
champion of Conservatism. His political incon- 
sistency was ascribed to an infirmity of judgment, 
almost amounting to craziness. The extreme 
rashness and injudicious haste of Mr. Disraeli to 
achieve greatness had excited strong prejudices 
against him, until even his power and originality 
were undervalued. He had, perhaps, never stood 
lower in public esteem than at this time. His 
immediate history had embraced only a series of 
defeats, of preposterous efforts, and ridiculous 
failures; and his final boast that he and the 
Agitator would meet at Philippi — that is to say, 
in the House of Commons — was considered as the 
climax of his absurdity. The public were not 
more deceived than he was himself as to the real 
nature of his powers ; and we shall find that it 
was not very long after he had reached this culmi- 
nating point of his folly, that he began to de- 
velope those powers which have since made him 
famous. 

Mr. Disraeli experienced a great and well-de- 
served difficulty in obliterating all traces of his 
pretended Radicalism of the year 1832, when he 
had finally flung himself into the ranks of the 
Conservatives. A declaration of his, that he had 
never been a member of the Westminster Reform 
Club, drew forth an indignant counter-charge from 
a correspondent of The Morning Chronicle , who 
stated, that after he (Mr. Disraeli) had become a 

c 



34 THE RIGHT HON. BENJAMIN DISRAELI, M.P. 

member, he had neglected to pay his first sub- 
scription ; and that a correspondence having ensued 
between himself and the secretary, it resulted in 
his withdrawal from the club. And in reference 
to his attacks on O'Connell, he called up an 
antagonist even from the wilds of Ireland, who 
declared that, within a month of Mr. Disraeli's 
speech at Taunton, he had spoken to him (the 
writer) in terms of extravagant praise of the Agi- 
tator, and had requested him to convey his kind 
remembrances to him. In fact, he was fairly 
beset on all sides — was never, perhaps, in his life 
so delightfully occupied in universal pugnacity. 
His troubles, however, were not over. In the 
course of the same year, towards its close, he pub- 
lished a brief work which he entitled A Vindica- 
tion of the English Constitution. Had he always 
written with the same concentration, spirit, and 
judgment, which characterised this book, he would 
long before have attained a distinguished position 
among contemporary politicians. To enter into 
any analysis of this work would exceed our limits ; 
but while speaking of Mr. Disraeli as a political 
writer, it may be as well to mention, that at a 
period anterior to any we have yet touched on, 
Mr. Disraeli figured in the capacity of editor of a 
morning newspaper, published under the auspices 
of the renowned John Murray, and called The 
Representative. It was an abortive undertaking, 
which not even the genius of a Disraeli could in- 
spire with vitality. The birth, staggering life, 
and death of this weak offspring of speculation, 



c VINDICATION OF THE CONSTITUTION/ 35 

with the quarrels it occasioned among all who 
were concerned in it, would itself form an amus- 
ing chapter in any new edition of the Curiosities 
of Literature, These events, however, are too 
remote to have much bearing on Mr. Disraeli's 
present political character. 

The Vindication of the English Constitution 
was, like most of Mr. Disraeli's writings after the 
year 1834, consistent with those principles which, 
as we have already hinted, had been shadowed 
forth from time to time by him. Whether for its 
historical illustrations or its style, it was not an 
effort to be despised ; and the time will probably 
come when it will have acquired a still greater 
literary interest and value. Its immediate power 
was shown in the virulent anger of the Whigs 
against the author. It produced an amusing 
episode in Mr. Disraeli's life, the last, with one 
exception, in which we shall have occasion to speak 
of him with even the shadow of ridicule. The 
Whig party commissioned one of their organs to 
attack Mr. Disraeli ; and towards the close of the 
year 1835, there appeared a leading article in The 
Globe, 'couched in language mild enough, but 
which, besides embodying an attempt to quiz Mr. 
Disraeli on his many salient points, distinctly 
charged him with having endeavoured, in 1832, 
to become one of O'Connell's tail. This was the 
old Wycombe story over again ; but it was revived 
at a period when it was supposed that it would be 
peculiarly annoying to Mr. Disraeli. The attempt 
was so far successful, for it put him in a great 
c 2 



36 THE RIGHT HON. BENJAMIN DISRAELI, M.P. 

passion, and he let himself down so low as to write 
to The Times newspaper a letter, in which, forget- 
ting all his satirical power, which would have enabled 
him effectually to sting his opponent, he applied 
language to the editor of The Globe, which was 
only forcible because it contained the raw material 
of abuse. Forgetting that he had himself been a 
writer of newspaper leaders, he speaks of the editor 
as c Some poor devil paid for his libel by the line/ 
adding, that i the thing who concocts the meagre 
sentences, and drivels out the rheumy rhetoric of 
The Globe, may be a senator in these queer times, 
or he may not f and much more pointless virulence 
of the same sort. In this letter he supplies an 
answer to the charge of inconsistency which he 
seems before to have forgotten; for in excusing 
himself from the imputation of wanting to be one 
of O'ConnelTs tail, he urges that in 1832 he had 
no tail, and adds, that in that year he was a very 
different man from what he had since become; 
that he then spoke with respect of the Protestant 
institutions of the empire, but now (that is to say, 
in 1835) he was actively engaged in undermining 
them. Mr. Disraeli, however, had not got rid of 
his bad taste — had not yet learned how to abstain 
from the indulgence of passion, or how to give 
that fine polish to his sarcasms by which he has 
since become so formidable. The unhappy writer 
in The Globe is throughout mauled ferociously. 
Of him Mr. Disraeli says, "The editor's business 
is to chalk the walls of the nation with praises of 
his master' s blacking ; only it is ludicrous to see 



HIS CONFLICT WITH c THE GLOBE.' 37 

this poor devil whitewashing the barriers of Bays- 
water with the same self-complacency as if he 
were painting the halls of the Vatican/ Mr. 
Disraeli would not write or speak such a sentence 
as this now. He has taken higher flights, sur- 
charges his sarcasms with more venom, and less 
gall. A long newspaper controversy ensued be- 
tween the parties, which was kept up on both sides 
with unabated ill-temper, Mr. Disraeli having de- 
cided advantage in the employment of abusive 
language. Towards the close of the controversy 
Mr. Disraeli's vanity flashed out brilliantly. The 
editor of The Globe had pompously declined to go 
any further into the subject, because he would be 
only gratifying his antagonist's passion for noto- 
riety. This was a home-thrust, and it told. Mr. 
Disraeli answered, c How could he be gratified by 
an ignoble controversy with an obscure animal 
like the editor of The Globe, when his own works 
had been translated, at least, into the languages of 
polished Europe, and circulated by thousands in 
the New World?' This last vigorous blast on 
the accustomed trumpet made John Bull laugh 
again, and gave the editor of The Globe a final 
advantage, which he secured by a judicious silence. 
At the commencement of this controversy, Mr. 
Disraeli begins by saying that he has often ob- 
served ' there are two kinds of nonsense — high 
nonsense and low nonsense.' This was rather an 
unfortunate observation, for a more apt descrip- 
tion of his own style when his vanity was rampant, 
and he breathed his grandiloquent vein, could not 



38 THE RIGHT HON. BENJAMIN DISRAELI, M.P. 

be found than in the phrase ' high nonsense/ In 
fact, a good satirical criticism of Mr. Disraeli might 
be formed by selections from his own works. 

During the year 1836, and the early part of 
1837, we find Mr. Disraeli still, from time to time, 
in a highly militant state; still dashing off much 
c high nonsense/ but more often allying it with 
sound argument and intelligible views. His genius 
also now began to take a more practical turn. He 
was still ambitious of entering parliament; but 
perhaps some good angel had cautioned him that 
he had better wait till the effect of his former 
gyrations had become somewhat obliterated from 
the public mind. A letter of his, addressed to the 
Bucks freeholders, upon some then impending 
changes in the law, excited attention, and was 
thought highly of, because it was free from 
'high nonsense/ and took an intelligible view of 
its subject. During this interval, also, some letters 
of the Junius order appeared in The Times news- 
paper, signed Runnymede, which were universally 
attributed to his pen, although not distinctly ac- 
knowledged by him. Internal evidence fixes the 
authorship. They exhibit power, weakened by 
flippancy ; historical illustrations perverted to serve 
party purposes; and frequently the most happy 
sketchings of personal character, and felicitous ex- 
posures of political shortcomings, with here and 
there a dash of almost insolent smartness, which 
gave them a raciness infinitely relishing to the 
reader. Their general principles are mainly con- 
sistent with those contained in former manifestoes 



ENTERS PARLIAMENT. 39 

by Mr. Disraeli. There is the same virulent oppo- 
sition to Whiggisin, and the same exaltation of 
old Toryism. 

At length, towards the close of 1837, the grand 
object of Mr. Disraeli's efforts was achieved. His 
political wanderings brought him to Philippi. He 
was returned to parliament for the borough of 
Maidstone. Mucb curiosity was felt to witness 
his debut as an orator. It cannot, with truth, be 
said that any very high expectations had been 
formed; and those who knew him, or had at all 
studied his character, did not scruple to predict 
the result. There had been throughout his public 
life such a contrast of strength and weakness, of 
power and extravagance, such a want of self- 
government, so many failures and so many suc- 
cesses, that people were puzzled what to think. 
Mr. Disraeli's eagerness for display left them not 
long in suspense. His was not a spirit to submit 
to training, to study the character of his audience, 
or learn the arts by which they were to be pro- 
pitiated. Nothing would serve him but a brilliant 
and immediate triumph. He must be all, or 
nothing. In one of his prefaces he describes 
youth as the season when we live in reveries of 
magnificent performance. His youth had, in this 
sense, lasted long beyond the usual age of intellec- 
tual maturity ; and now was come the hour for 
the magnificent performance. Now he was to 
burst upon the world as a great and accomplished 
orator, just as he hjad before astonished mankind 
as a novelist, poet, and political writer. He was 



40 THE RIGHT HON. BENJAMIN DISRAELI, M.P. 

to spring to the summit at one bound. He came, 
predestined to rule the senate by his eloquence, 
predetermined to head a party of his own. Be- 
sides, he had to fulfil his challenge to O'Connell — 
he had sworn to extinguish the most powerful 
man of his day. Within a very short time of 
his election he rose to make his maiden speech. 
He anticipated a signal triumph ; he accomplished 
a most ridiculous failure. He can now afford to 
have this event recorded, because he has since 
attained such eminence; but he would not have 
done so had not there been an almost total 
change in the construction of his mind — if the 
atmosphere of exaggeration in which he had so 
long lived had not been dispersed, so that he could 
obtain a clear vision of the real world around 
him. It is impossible to say what this first speech, 
which was, no doubt, well prepared beforehand, 
would have been if heard at length, because the 
risibility of the House was so much excited, partly 
by the matter of the speech, and partly by the 
peculiar manner of the speaker, that they would 
not let him proceed, but interrupted him with 
bursts of merriment, such as are seldom indulged 
in at a speaker. He has since acquired the art of 
making them laugh as loudly with him. He was 
so assailed with ridicule as he went on, from flight 
to flight, in language the House could not under- 
stand, that when he came to what should have 
been his peroration, but which he violently tacked 
on to the fragments of the main body, he utterly 
broke down, and was compelled to resume his seat 



MAKES A FIASCO. 41 

amidst convulsions of laughter. The fact was, 
that the speech was utterly inappropriate to the 
occasion and to the subject. The style was alto- 
gether too ambitious, the images too high-flown 
for a beginner, more especially one who was already 
staggering under the weight of Alroy and some 
kindred follies. His vaulting ambition had, indeed, 
o'erleapt itself; and his c other side' seemed at the 
time to be a bottomless pit of bathos. 

There was one passage, which he ejaculated 
with almost the energy of despair as he sat down, 
that deserves to be recorded, because, whether it 
was a deliberate opinion, or whether it was only a 
mere angry spasm of exasperated vanity, it was 
still a singular prophecy. He said, with almost 
savage spirit, amidst the shouts of laughter which 
drowned his sentences, — ' I have begun several 
times many things, and have often succeeded at 
last. I shall sit down now, but the time will come 
when you will hear me V This was looked on 
at the time as the empty boast of a conceited man 
— another flash in the pan of the same order as 
his earlier ones ; but time proved that he had 
an instinctive sense of his own powers. 



IV. 



WITH the egregious failure recorded in the last 
section, ends our record of the mistakes of Mr. 
Disraeli's ambition. It would almost seem to have 
startled him into a consciousness of the great error 



42 THE RIGHT HON. BENJAMIN DISRAELI, M.P. 

that had obstructed his previous career. Without 
being able to vouch for the fact, we would confi- 
dently hazard the assertion, that he must have sub- 
mitted his mind from that time to a most rigorous 
discipline — that he ceased to rely so wholly as he 
had done on his own impulses, and determined to 
acquire a mastery of those parts of the art of ora- 
tory which are not immediately dependent on the 
inspirations of the mind, but without which the 
finest ideas are useless. For some time after his 
first speech he remained comparatively silent ; nor 
did he, for a year and a half afterwards, take any 
prominent part in the debates. When he again made 
an effort of magnitude, a total change seemed to have 
come over him, although he had not yet reached 
to anything like the skill he afterwards displayed. 
He dropped his grandiloquent style, but kept his 
original ideas and forcible language; he made no 
ambitious efforts to work either on the passions or 
on the imagination; his manner grew quiet and 
collected ; he was more argumentative than decla- 
matory; and his speeches became not only co- 
herent in sentiment but also symmetrical in form. 
In July, 1839, he began to make a favourable im- 
pression on the House. He delivered a remarkably 
sensible and powerful speech, in which he explained 
that the demands of the Chartists, although they 
aimed at the attainment of political rights, were 
really the offspring of social wrongs ; and he de- 
claimed, with vehement eloquence, against the 
growing tendency of our government and legisla- 
tion towards centralisation, and against the govern- 



BEGINS TO RECOVER HIMSELF. 43 

raent of the country being virtually entrusted to 
the middle classes. It was now that he began 
also to propound in some intelligible shape, not in 
the nighty, flashy, metaphorical style of former 
years, his doctrines as to the true interests of the 
nation. He entered, on more than one occasion, 
lis solemn protest, retrospectively, against the 
attempts of the Whigs to obtain, through the 
medium of the Reform-bill, a permanent grasp of 
the electoral power. Those who had read some 
scattered passages in Mr. Disraeli's earlier writings, 
and who remembered the grounds he at the time 
alleged for starting in public life on the Eadical 
interest, were struck with the fact that the prophe- 
cies he then made had only not been fulfilled 
Decause the reaction of Conservative feeling had 
jeen ^strong in proportion to the attempts of the 
Whigs to exercise their power. But Mr. Disraeli 
lad, in the meantime, elevated his views beyond 
the narrow sphere of party influences, and had con- 
solidated in his own mind a scheme of policy which 
he had often before shadowed out, in which hatred 
of the Whigs was rendered secondary to a desire 
to bring about a closer alliance between the old 
aristocracy of the country and the industrious 
masses. He called upon the latter to yield the 
right of government to the former, on condition 
that they should be responsible for their social wel- 
fare, on principles of legislation which he pro- 
claimed not to be new, but to have been only in 
abeyance. A favourite aphorism with him at this 
time was, that c the aristocracy and the labouring 



44 

population constitute tlie nation ! ' — the same 
fundamental principle which he has endeavoured to 
set, in a more attractive form, before the public in 
later years, in his novels Coningsby and Sybil. In 
pursuance of this scheme, which is still held by a 
majority of living statesmen to be only the crotchet 
of a political enthusiast, Mr. Disraeli invariably 
made a somewhat ostentatious display of his sym- 
pathy for those Chartists who were punished for 
the alleged political offence of holding opinions 
regarding the rights of the multitude different 
from those of their superiors. One of the best 
speeches he made in this interval of parliamentary 
regeneration was on behalf of Lovett and Collins, 
whose case he took up on high constitutional 
grounds, disdaining all call for mercy on the part 
of the State, and asserting that they were in fact 
the aggrieved parties. This was in the year 1840. 
During 1841 he spoke with more frequency, and 
grew gradually in the good-will of the House, till 
he effaced the recollection of his first failure. His 
speeches on the Copyright and Education ques- 
tions, in particular, were much admired, and he 
show r ed unexpected debating powers in an attack 
he made on the Whig ministry just before their 
final downfall. 

Throughout these years he repeatedly enforced 
in parliament, as also in his various writings, those 
ideas of political and social reform which are known 
as i Young Englandism/ Identity of sentiment 
and opinion between him and Lord John Manners, 
Mr. Smythe, and some few others, led them to 



45 

form a little party of their own in the very heart of 
the Conservative ranks ; and of this party, such as 
it was, Mr. Disraeli, by common consent, was 
made the leader. Thus was his early ambition so 
far gratified. He was the head of a party — to be 
sure, it was only a little one — and was the tar- 
get for all the spare ridicule in parliament and in 
the press. But still power and royalty, in any 
shape, are delicious to ambitious minds; and a 
nucleus, however small, may always be made a 
rallying point. Something of a prophetic spirit 
seems to have led his imagination to conceive the 
sort of character he afterwards acted with in Lord 
John Manners, and which he has striven to embody 
in his later novels. In the Revolutionary Epic, 
amidst much bombastic common-place, there is 
sketched the portrait of a nobleman, for w 7 hich 
Lord John Manners, and some few others of his 
class, might have sat : — » 

* This man, thus honoured, set apart, refined, 
Serene and courteous, learned, thoughtful, brave, 
As full of charity as noble pomp, — 
This pledge that in the tempests of the world 
The stream of culture shall not backward ebb, — 
This is the noble that mankind demands, 
And this the man a nation loves to trust.' 

In the early part of 1842 he girded himself up 
to a great task, — one to which he proved himself 
quite equal. We allude to his long speech on 
our consular establishments abroad, — a speech 
which did not receive its full meed of approval at 
the time. It was, ' Pooh-poohed V by Lord Pal- 
raerston, and treated with indifference by Sir 



46 THE RIGHT HON. BENJAMIN DISRAELI, M.P. 

Robert Peel. It is more than probable that Sir 
Robert thus early wounded the vanity of his aspiring 
follower, and so laid the foundation for his subse- 
quent memorable hatred. If, however, Mr. Dis- 
raeli was conscious of such feelings at the time, 
he did not give them utterance; for during the 
whole of 1842 and 1843, he spoke frequently in 
general defence of Sir Robert PeePs policy, more 
especially his free-trade measures, which he justi- 
fied on the ground that they were fully in accord- 
ance with the unrealised policy of Pitt. His 
speeches during these years were full of informa- 
tion, of bold views, of striking historical illustra- 
tions, and were generally so well sustained as to 
be quite refreshing after the commonplace argu- 
ment of ordinary speeches, where ideas were con- 
stantly reproduced by one member after another, 
but few adding any to the common stock. Still, 
up to this time, Mr. Disraeli could scarcely be said 
to have achieved any triumph as an orator. The 
utmost he had effected was to have recovered him- 
self from the absurd position in which he had 
originally placed himself. 

But with the year 1844 came a very different 
state of things. From an early period in the ses- 
sion of that year Mr. Disraeli began to develope 
parliamentary powers, of an order far higher than 
any he had exhibited before. He took and main- 
tained a position in the debates of the House of 
Commons, which was in itself sufficiently distin- 
guished, but which became still more remarkable 
when contrasted with his early failure as a speaker. 



ASSAILS SIR ROBERT PEEL. 47 

Of all the men of talent in that assembly, he 
was the very last who could have been expected 
so to have undermined Sir Robert Peel. The 
parliamentary reputation of the right honourable 
baronet appeared to be so consolidated; he was 
looked up to with such universal respect, if not as 
a statesman, at least as a debater ; he had so often 
withstood the shocks of heavy artillery, and the 
deadly aim of rifle practice, from established ora- 
tors, that the shafts of Mr. Disraeli's ridicule, 
however pointed or envenomed, might have been 
expected to fall dead and blunted at his feet. 
But it was not so in fact. Mr. Disraeli managed 
his attacks with such skill, and aimed his blows 
with such precision at the weak points of his dis- 
tinguished adversary, that his triumph, as far as 
mere debating was concerned, became complete. 
So singular a chapter in parliamentary history de- 
serves to be entered upon in detail. But before 
doing so, it may be as well to pause for a few mo- 
ments, that we may point the moral of the fore- 
going pages. The reader will scarcely have failed 
to perceive what, if we had entered still more into 
detail, we should have made still more apparent, 
that all Mr. Disraeli's failures, whether in litera- 
ture or in politics, may be traced, on the one hand, 
to an exaggerative temperament, which led him to 
take false views of the realities around him, and 
to over-estimate his own power of coping with this 
imaginary creation; and, on the other, to his 
having perpetually invoked, towards the accom- 
plishment of the most simple and commonplace 



48 THE RIGHT HON. BENJAMIN DISRAELI, M.P. 

objects, intellectual faculties which, even in their 
perfection, are only required for the most capacious 
designs and the most grand events. During the 
whole of his earlier career he seems never to have 
had any one practicable end in view, but to have 
been perpetually deceived by ignes fatui of his own 
imagination, till he really believed that he was 
combatting realities. We have seen that these 
ill-regulated efforts produced perpetual fear and 
suspicion in the public mind ; that no reliance 
whatever could be felt on the conduct of one who 
seemed so little to understand the common condi- 
tions of success; that even where he anticipated 
his contemporaries in his judgments, his vaticina- 
tions were looked at as the ravings of an enthu- 
siast; and that, while possessing talents which 
were admitted to be such as few men are gifted 
with, all his offers of support to existing parties 
were rejected with contempt, until he became a 
sort of foundling of the political world, in whose 
case every one certainly felt interested, but whose 
connexion every one repudiated. From the mo- 
ment, however, that he sets up for himself tan- 
gible and practicable aims ; proportioning his efforts 
to his powers and to the customs of his contem- 
poraries, training and disciplining his mind in 
recognised formularies, and perfecting his talents 
by comparison and emulation with established 
models ; all that was wild, visionary, and in some 
respects ludicrous in his former proceedings be- 
comes obliterated from the mind; until, having 
discarded all that brass which he in vain strove to 



HIS POSITION IN 1844. 49 

make pass for current coin, lie is enabled, out of 
what is really a small portion of sterling capital, 
to accumulate so large a proportion of influence 
and fame. His career is, in fact, at once an 
example and a warning. Whatever indulgence 
might have been extended to his very early extra- 
vagancies, it was unpardonable in a man "who had 
proved his possession of such talents, that he 
should have reached the age of two or three and 
thirty — a period of life at which some of the 
greatest productions of genius have been perfected 
— without having acquired even that average self- 
knowledge and judgment which it is the privilege 
of almost the meanest persons to possess, if not 
actually of unsound mind. Indeed, when it is re- 
membered that Mr. Disraeli's reputation has al- 
ways been built on his satirical powers, and that 
its climax has only been attained by the perfection 
of his attacks on Sir Robert Peel, we do not know 
that he ought to be allowed to escape so easily 
from the reprehension due to his former follies. 

Mr. Disraeli's attack on Sir Robert Peel was 
very sudden, — so sudden as almost to preclude 
the belief that he was actuated by public spirit, or, 
indeed, by any other feeling than one of personal 
enmity. Into the more common insinuations 
against Mr. Disraeli, that he had asked for a place 
and had been refused by the government, we do 
not think it necessary to enter. The facts are not 
established, nor ha,s there been any direct assertion 
or denial by the parties. We would rather seek 
for causes quite as natural, though not so obvious. 



50 THE RIGHT HON. BENJAMIN DISRAELT, M,P. 

Sir Robert Peel, being essentially a practical states- 
man, sought, as the agents of his policy, men of a 
practical turn of mind. Sir Robert Peel, like 
most practical men, hated 'ideas/ or rather, he es- 
timated them not by their abstract truth, but by 
their capability of being realised in party action. 
He altogether undervalued Mr. Disraeli's talents; 
looked upon him as an unsafe ally, who might, by 
chance, hit with a random shot, but who could not 
be depended on for steady purposes and aims. He 
had, on many occasions, treated the aspiring rege- 
nerator of his age with marked indifference, if not 
contempt. Secure behind his rampart of past 
parliamentary successes, he despised one whom he 
never expected to head an assault. It is possible 
that this cold affectation of superiority stung the 
natural self-esteem of Mr. Disraeli, conscious of 
his undeveloped capabilities ; and that, long before 
he was in action an open foe, he was in heart a 
secret enemy. Political hatreds, like those of 
private persons, are too often only the rankling 
wounds of self-love. 

In two short months was Mr. Disraeli's osten- 
sible support of the Conservative minister changed 
to scarcely disguised opposition. Political events 
had, in the interval, furnished him with a pretext 
for his animosity. But, in the month of February 
1844, Sir Robert Peel could have had no suspicion, 
if, indeed, he would have taken any care, that he 
would so soon arouse so formidable an opponent ; 
for in that month, on the opening of the session, 
Mr. Disraeli was still a not inactive supporter of 



HOW HE CHANGED IN 1844 51 

Sir Robert Peel. He spoke of him incidentally 
as a minister of great ability and great power; and 
delivered an eulogium upon him for the admirable 
manner in which he had reconstructed his party, 
in which, when he said, ( that every thing great is 
difficult/ he must have meant that the accomplish- 
ment of so difficult a task was the proof of great- 
ness. He farther expressed his conviction, that if 
Sir Robert Peel would propose great measures the 
public would support him ; that it was for him to 
create public opinion, not to follow it. 

Mr. Disraeli's public support became converted 
at so early a date as the following April into 
scarcely disguised opposition, and for two years and 
a half he devoted himself, with an unparalleled 
perseverance, to the task of torturing and exas- 
perating, in every possible way, the man on whom 
he had formerly lavished his praises. Let us 
glance at the temptations which Sir Robert Peel's 
personal and political conduct afforded to so accom- 
plished a satirist. 



V. 

7'PHE systematic attacks of Mr. Disraeli, not merely 
-*- on the politics, but also on the reputation, 
character, and personal bearing of Sir Robert Peel, 
are without a parallel in modern parliamentary 
history. There was a strong dramatic interest at- 
taching to them, which we look for in vain in the 
more courteous and forbearing practice of contem- 
d 2 



52 THE RIGHT HON. BENJAMIN DISRAELI, M.P. 

porary party warfare. The popular maxim of 
' Measures, not Men/ has so imbued the minds of 
the leading speakers with a vague liberality of 
sentiment, that they are with but few exceptions, 
sparing of personalities, and disposed, when they 
do indulge in them, to wrap them up in kindly 
circumlocution. Statesmen do not meet each other, 
face to face, as personal antagonists, but rather 
fight by demonstrations made under cover of the 
principles of their party. If we except some few 
scenes towards the close of the life of Mr. Canning, 
and the contest between Mr. Secretary Stanley 
and Mr. O'Connell (in neither of which cases were 
extremes of personality indulged in), nearly half a 
century has elapsed since there was a case of such 
a sustained determination on the part of one pub- 
lic man to destroy another, on avowedly personal 
grounds. 

Rightly to estimate the value and understand 
the sudden acceptation of the series of sarcasms, 
aimed, with so deadly a force and effect, at Sir 
Robert Peel, we must recal to mind the position 
of the Conservative premier at that time. His 
unparalleled and unexpected success as a minister, 
and the power, almost dictator-like, which he 
wielded over an obedient House of Commons, in 
the general paralysis of party produced by his own 
skilful manoeuvring — these, and other circumstances 
of a more personal nature, had stimulated the 
egotism which was always a feature in his charac- 
ter, until it almost absorbed his better judgment. 
He had now, for nearly four years, held absolute 



SIR ROBERT TEEl/s POSITION IN 1844. 53 

sway over the country, and, by whatever means, 
had made his will not merely the law of parliament, 
but also that of public opinion. During all his 
former life he had worn that mask of subserviency 
to even uncongenial opinions, which, in a repre- 
sentative legislature, is one of the conditions of 
what is called leading party, and, therefore, of ob- 
taining power. Hated during three-fourths of his 
career by the growing majority of his countrymen, 
his talents sneered at, his character aspersed, he 
had now raised himself to that proud position in 
which he was all but regarded as the Trustee of 
the Xation, — was even almost the Man of the 
People. Here was enough to unsettle the most 
philosophical mind ; but over a spirit whose ardour 
had been greatest, perhaps, when most repressed, 
and whose ambition, not confined to mere political 
conquest, extended to the achievement of great 
social triumphs, its influence might well be all but 
intoxicating. There was yet a more immediate 
and exciting stimulant to self-esteem. But a short 
period had elapsed after Sir Robert Peel's accession 
to power, when one of the chief territorial lords, 
who was the recognised leader of the agricultural 
body, had fulminated an arrogant warning to the 
minister, that they who had brought him into 
power could, if he were not their political tool, 
turn him out again. Sir Robert Peel, with the 
hereditary pride of a manufacturing aristocrat, 
might feel resentment at this threat from an anta- 
gonist of what, though of so recent origin, he yet 
might consider his ( order/ What wonder, then, 



54 THE RIGHT HON. BENJAMIN DISRAELI, M.P. 

if the minister, who was now almost worshipped 
by the middle classes, finding that by the breath 
of his mouth he had scattered to the winds the 
power that had fortified this boast, should at times 
be carried away by a proud exultation, till, in an 
exaggerated egotism, he sometimes forgot what 
was due to an assembly in which all are, nominally 
at least, on an equality ? He certainly presumed, 
from time to time, though, perhaps, unconsciously, 
on his position, gave himself autocratic airs, and 
talked too much in the ( I and my King' style. 
The excessive labour and anxiety he underwent, 
acting on impaired physical powers, produced an 
irritability of temperament which he could not 
control, and, on more than one occasion, it burst 
forth in a manner so violent as to require from the 
House all their forbearance and respect. He also 
acquired, from his singular success, a habit of ar- 
rogating to himself an elevation of sentiment, and 
a degree of moral purity, which was scarcely com- 
patible with his actual position ; and the House of 
Commons were thus forced, almost reluctantly, to 
remember that the legislative triumphs upon which 
all his implied boasts were based had been gained at 
the expense of a flagrant, and, except in his own 
career, an unparalleled inconsistency. Further, it 
should be remembered, that although, by playing 
off parties against each other, he had the House of 
Commons at his feet, still, as a statesman, he was 
isolated. With the exception of his own imme- 
diate clique, who, for the most part, owed their poli- 
tical elevation to his favour, he had, perhaps, no 



HIS GROWING INFLUENCE. 55 

honest friends in the House but the Radicals. The 
Tories hated him for past and prospective treachery; 
the Whigs, though forced to affect lip-honour, 
were jealous that he should have stepped in to de- 
fraud them of their well-earned leadership of the 
middle classes. Thus, to a bold assailant, it was 
clear that he might have an audience not indis- 
posed to sympathise with him in any well-aimed 
attacks on Sir Robert Peel, so soon as the slight- 
est symptoms should appear of a decay in his 
popularity and power, or so soon as some great 
movement, either in or out of parliament, should 
force the minister to abandon his manoeuvring and 
come boldly out,, into the open field. All these 
considerations were, no doubt, noted, from time 
to time, by Mr. Disraeli, to be acted upon in 
furtherance of his own designs; but a stronger 
spur may be found in the scarcely restrained con- 
tempt shown by Sir Robert Peel towards some of 
the most brilliant of his supporters, and more 
especially to that very able, but sensitive personage, 
the member for Shrewsbury. 

Mr. Disraeli began his assault with much cau- 
tion. He did not allow his vindictive purpose to 
be seen in the first instance. Satiated, perhaps, 
with' his leadership of the Young England party, 
he thought he saw a favourable opportunity, in the 
growing antagonism between the ministry and the 
agriculturists, for attaching himself to a much 
more numerous and influential body, who might, 
in some future organisation of parties, attain to 
power. It is due to him, also, to say, that of late 



56 THE RIGHT HON. BENJAMIN DISRAELI, M.P. 

years the opinions he advocated assimilated him 
more with those who afterwards were called the 
Protectionists, than with any other party. In 
proportion as the suspicions, and ultimately, the 
hatred, of that party became concentrated on Sir 
Robert Peel, he was able to make his passions 
jump with his principles, and gratify his revenge 
while consolidating his influence. But the first 
speech in which he began to show his sarcastic 
power, and to sneer at the then Dictator of the 
House of Commons, contained nothing of the 
bitterness which so distinguished his later attacks. 
There was at that time no open rupture between 
him and the premier, although it was then gene- 
rally rumoured that a cause had arisen in secret, 
in consequence of the refusal of Sir Robert Peel 
to employ Mr. Disraeli in the public service. He 
began with caution and a semblance of public 
spirit ; at first including Sir James Graham in his 
general strictures, and only quizzing Sir Robert 
Peel incidentally. His speech was on the subject 
of the Poor Law, and exhibited a singular susten- 
tation and neatness. Though evidently intended 
by its author as a great effort, there Avas no extra- 
vagance or hyperbolical allusion ; there was none 
of that grandiloquence, or that straining after far- 
fetched and high-flown images, which had charac- 
terised Mr. Disraeli's early efforts. But there 
were sudden, sly turns of ironical humour, and 
the ridicule of Sir Robert Peel was so adroitly 
managed, as to be made to spring up in the mind 
of the hearer, rather than to be developed in the 



HIS IMPROVEMENT AS A SPEAKER. 57 

actual words of the speaker. His manner, too, 
was not to be mistaken. It spoke more than the 
meaning of the words, and implied a studied offen- 
siveness and contempt. 

The total change that had taken place in the 
organisation of Mr. Disraeli's mind since his first 
appearance in parliament, was not more shewn in 
the superior tone and polish of his parliamentary 
speeches, than in the abstinence and self-denial 
which induced him to address the House at inter- 
vals so few and far between. Comparing the effect 
produced with the infrequency of the efforts, we 
are the more struck with his refinement of intel- 
lectual power. One or two, or, at the utmost, 
three great speeches in a session sufficed to set 
a-trembling the finely poised rock of the premier's 
parliamentary ascendancy. It is no argument 
against the merit of the speaker that all his appa- 
rent impromptus must have been carefully conned 
and prepared. Such laborious application will alone 
enable a man to carry off the great prizes in par- 
liamentary warfare; and those who were accustomed 
to hear, as far as their convulsions of merriment 
would allow them, the sudden and startling points 
of humour and sarcasm towards which Mr. Disraeli 
was accustomed to work up the level argument or 
the irrelevant declamation of his speeches, will ad- 
mit that not even Mr. Sheil himself could have 
introduced these gems into their setting with a 
more perfect command of the orator's handicraft. 
Half their force arose from their coming on the 
audience by surprise. So well was their approach 



58 THE RIGHT HON. BENJAMIN DISRAELI, M.P. 

concealed, that whilst the apprehensive victim was 
writhing in suspense, he was robbed of the sym- 
pathy which his torture might have excited, by the 
audience being carefully kept in the dark as to the 
moment when the lash was to be laid on. It has 
been observed, that the actual sterling capital of 
ideas by which the effect was produced was com- 
paratively small. No military commander ever 
knew better how to concentrate a small force upon 
a weak point, so as to supply the deficiency of 
great power. Mr. Disraeli seems to have ruth- 
lessly anatomised the character of his antagonist, to 
have counted his vulnerable points, and to have 
set apart a sort of field-day for the attack upon 
each. Invective or raillery, denunciation or sar- 
casm, were by turns employed to expose the moral 
delinquency or the personal weakness of the object 
of the attack ; and the fault was laid bare, or the 
failing held up to ridicule, with a precision and 
grasp of mind that was only exceeded by the sin- 
gular polish of the language employed, and the apt 
choice of the exact moment when the exposure 
would most serve the purpose of the satirist. We 
shall fail to convey to the reader unaccustomed to 
study in detail the characters of public men, or to 
appreciate the tact with which the train was fired 
at the felicitous crisis, a clear idea of the effect of 
Mr. Disraeli's attacks, by a mere record of the 
points, aided as they were by his dramatic delivery. 
One very remarkable speech of his, towards the 
close of the session 1844, was at the time when, 
an adverse vote having been passed by the House 



THE ' ORGANIZED HYPOCRISY/ 59 

on the subject of tlie Sugar Duties, the ministry 
had murmured threats of resignation. The efforts 
of Mr. Disraeli to rouse the House from that state 
of degradation of which, not long before, on the 
Factory Question, they had given such startling 
proofs, were among the happiest efforts of decla- 
matory power. It would be tedious to enumerate 
the many points of the speech ; but the animus at 
once of the speaker and his party was shewn in 
the phrase, received with rapturous cheers, in which 
he characterised Sir Robert Peel, in his position 
of minister, as one w r ho menaced his friends while 
he cringed to his opponents. Nor was he less 
happy when, with one stroke of his pencil, he de- 
scribed the solemn inconsistency with which a Con- 
servative government had adopted a Whig policy, by 
denouncing the Peel administration and its moral 
pretences as an c Organised Hypocrisy/ The value 
of Mr. Disraeli's points has always consisted in 
their universal applicability. They were not 
merely traps for the cheers of a party, but embodied 
propositions so obvious, in language so terse yet 
pregnant, that whatever might be the political 
opinions or predilections of individuals, they were 
compelled to subscribe to their truth, at the same 
time that they admired their power. 

Long before the speech to which we have just 
referred, Mr. Disraeli had already acquired a kind 
of ascendancy in the House of Commons. It was 
not so much respect, as a mixture of fear and 
admiration, and a relish for his humour, enjoyed 
for a long time with something like compunction. 



60 THE RIGHT HON. BENJAMIN DISRAELI, M.P. 

He had not, of course, the highest of political 
characters. His early extravagancies and incon- 
sistencies were not wholly forgotten • nor was the 
palpable vindictiveness of his motives sufficiently 
veiled by his sounding pretexts of political prin- 
ciple. Therefore, even in the midst of the de- 
lirious excitement into which he at times threw 
the House of Commons, they retained a remem- 
brance of the inadequacy of his provocation and 
the incongruity of his professions. But at last, 
assisted by circumstances, and especially by the in- 
creasing divergence of the policy of Sir Robert 
Peel from the line of his former principles, the 
envenomed art of Mr. Disraeli triumphed over 
these last faint promptings of moral reluctance. 
With the increasing attention and susceptibility of 
the House, grew the confidence and the ambition 
of this determined assailant. He changed his 
former weapons for others more difficult to handle; 
from single-stick to broad-sword his advance was 
not more rapid than from broad-sword to rapier 
and the poisoned dagger. In his earlier attacks 
he had still observed an ostentatious pretence of 
public principle; as he grew in temerity and 
success he flung aside this last mask of his 
revenge, and resorted to undisguised personality. 
A more safe mode of attack than to render the 
premier abhorred for alleged political turpitude, 
was to make him ridiculous on account of exagge- 
rated personal talents. Not content with con- 
fronting Sir Robert Peel as a statesman, Mr. 
Disraeli sought to undermine him as an orator. 



EFFECT OF HIS ATTACK ON PEEL. GI 

Here again we cannot hope to make the reader 
fully feel the then force and applicability of Mr. 
Disraeli's points. Between the end of 1844 and 
the spring of 1845 Sir Robert Peel, who had at 
first but ill-affected a lofty contempt of his 
antagonist, began to shew, by the notice he took 
of his attacks, that he at last recognised them as 
great parliamentary facts. To the magnanimous 
resolution with which Sir Robert strove to resist 
such admissions, let us bear the testimony of our 
admiration; but had he been made of adamant 
itself, he could not have ignored so persevering 
and powerful an enemy. We are not upholding 
Mr. Disraeli against the moral censure which may 
be assumed against him. Sir Robert Peel was, 
doubtless, at that time working out, at immense 
sacrifices of political character ,and personal ease, 
what he conceived to be a great mission, imposed 
on him for the good of his country. A more 
magnanimous enemy than Mr. Disraeli would 
have acknowledged and respected the difficulties 
of his position ; but wounded vanity knows no 
conscience, and Mr. Disraeli spared no means, 
however repulsive, to effect his great object— that of 
irretrievably damaging the man who had slighted 
his claims. He had gained one point when he 
provoked Sir Robert Peel into a portentous refusal 
to c bandy personalities' with him. Unfortunately 
for Sir Robert, those personalities were always 
linked with some well-aimed accusation, or with 
some happy criticism ; and the very approval of 
the auditors who but a short time before would 



62 THE RIGHT HON. BENJAMIN DISRAELI, M.V. 

have resented any attempt to insult their leading 
orator, amounted to a practical denial that they 
were personalities only. Mr. Disraeli met Sir 
Robert Peel's disclaimer only with an increased 
ingenuity of attack. He quizzed him unmerci- 
fully. There was not a failing that he did not 
hold up to ridicule. When Sir Robert Peel intro- 
duced the Bill for the increased grant to Maynooth, 
he rested his arguments less upon any broad 
scheme of policy which might have compromised 
him directly with powerful parties, than upon the 
fact that the principle had been sanctioned, though 
obscurely, by parliamentary authority. This gave 
occasion to Mr. Disraeli to make a hit at the 
premier, which was at once humorous and true. 
He said, that with him great measures were 
always rested on small precedents ; that he always 
traced the steam-engine back to the tea-kettle ; 
that, in fact, all his precedents were 'tea-kettle' 
precedents. It was in the same speech that he 
laid it down as a political axiom, that c party was 
necessary to public liberty in a representative 
government; that a popular assembly without 
parties — in fact, five hundred isolated individuals 
— could not stand for five years against a minister 
with an organised government, without becoming 
a servile senate/ 

This speech was more profusely studded with 
brilliant passages of sarcasm and rhetoric than any 
he had yet delivered. Protesting against the 
domination of the Duke of Wellington in the 
House of Lords, and of Sir Robert Peel in the 



HIS SARCASMS ON PEEL. 63 

Lower Assembly, he said, — ' Another place (using 
the cant phrase of parliament) 'Another place may- 
be drilled into a guard-room, and the House of 
Commons may be degraded into a vestry/ — thus 
inferentially casting a slur on the ascendancy of 
the leader of the House of Commons ; and then, 
soon after, he worked his allusion up to a climax 
by saying, that in place of all that they had been 
accustomed to honour in the shape of statesmen, 
whether of the past or of the present age, they had 
only got 'a great pairliamentary middle-man/ And 
what was a middleman? alluding to the great 
curse of Irish agriculture. ' He was a man who 
bamboozled one party and plundered the other, 
till having obtained a position to which he was not 
entitled, he cried out, ' Let us have no party ! 
Let us have fixity of tenure V y This was one of 
his most successful hits. But, with merciless per- 
tinacity, he again assailed the irritated premier, 
startled out of his self-complacency. Sir Robert 
PeeFs influence as an orator had not been at- 
tained so much by the intrinsic value or beauty of 
his speeches, as by the consummate art with which 
he had organised and pressed into his service con- 
tingents unwillingly supplied from the most oppo- 
site sources. His parliamentary character rested 
more upon his course of action than upon his real 
eloquence. Mr. Disraeli had not failed to remem- 
ber this great flaw; and he went on to characterise 
the speeches, through long years, of his antagonist, 
faithfully reported in Hansard, as c Dreary pages 
of interminable talk ; full of predictions falsified, 



64 THE RIGHT HON. BENJAMIN DISRAELI, M.P. 

pledges broken, calculations that had gone wrong, 
and budgets that had blown up. And all this not 
relieved by a single original thought, a single 
generous impulse, or a single happy expression/ 
1 This was a hard measure of criticism, but its no- 
velty, if not its truth, met with immediate accep- 
tation from the House of Commons, thus, for 
almost the first time, led to despise their long- 
worshipped oracle. His summing-up of the politi- 
cal tactics of Sir Robert Peel, one-sided as it was, 
could not but be admired for its concentrated 
vigour. He described it as 'a system so matter- 
of-fact, yet so fallacious; taking in every body, 
though every body knew he was deceived; a sys- 
tem so mechanical, yet so Machiavelian, that he 
could hardly say what it was, except a sort of 
humdrum hocus-pocus, in which the c Order of the 
Day ; was moved to take in a nation/ Those who 
can remember the mysterious concealment which 
preceded the announcement of Sir Robert 
PeeFs great measures as a minister, and the as- 
tonishment and confusion which followed their 
disclosure, will be able to appreciate the refined 
satire of this point, the interest of which was 
necessarily evanescent. The peroration of the same 
speech was a powerful stimulant to those who con- 
ceived themselves injured by the desertion of their 
long-trusted leader. Mr. Disraeli called upon 
them to prove to Sir Robert Peel that 'cunning is 
not caution, nor habitual perfidy high policy of 
state f and he wound up by exhorting them ' to 
dethrone a dynasty of deception, by putting an 



HIS POSITION IN 1846. 65 

end to this intolerable yoke of official despotism 
and parliamentary imposture/ It was in the same 
year that Mr. Disraeli made his happy illustration 
of the political inconsistency of Sir Robert Peel, 
in which he said that ' the right honourable gen- 
tleman had caught the Whigs bathing, and had 
run away with their clothes •/ an illustration which, 
more humorous than refined, was immediately 
tangible by the popular apprehension. He also 
threw off an annoying allusion to that irritability 
which we have already said had become a failing 
in Sir Robert Peel; when he observed that he 
had spoken of some of these attacks 'in moments 
too testy for so great a man to indulge in/ But 
the unkindest cut of all was his sneer at one part 
of the oratory of the right honourable baronet in 
which he seemed to take great pride, when he 
advised him to ' stick to quotation ; because he 
never quoted any passage that had not previously 
received the meed of parliamentary approbation/ 
These c points ' fall almost dead when repeated on 
paper. To see their sting it is necessary to throw 
yourself again into the scene, to recall the relative 
position of the parties, and to conceive the utter 
astonishment with which both the person attacked 
• and the spectators witnessed, not merely the bold- 
ness of the assault on one hitherto deemed un- 
assailable except by parliamentary equals, but also 
the novelty and the perfection of the means em- 
ployed. 

The session of 1846 brought Mr. Disraeli's 
parliamentary triumphs to their climax. He not 

s 



66 THE RIGHT HON. BENJAMIN DISIlAELI, M.P. 

only displayed still greater debating powers, but 
he also took a much higher position than ever he 
had done before. Political events favoured him, 
by rendering it easy for him to continue, in all 
their virulence, his attacks on Sir Robert Peel, 
while he need not make so unblushing a display 
of his motives. His bitter personalities could 
now be passed off as indignant outbursts of out- 
raged public spirit ; nay, by a very large section 
of the House, and a respectable portion of the 
public, they were regarded as so many evidences 
of an active patriotism. The minister had now 
made venture of his last remnant of consistency : 
he had staked his all on a desperate hazard. 
Hitherto, however he might have been suspected 
of meditating a violent change of policy, he had 
kept, externally at least, some terms with the 
great majority of his followers. Long since iden- 
tified in opinion and feeling with the opposition, 
he had still been regarded as the acknowledged 
leader of the Conservative party. So long, there- 
fore, as Mr. Disraeli had continued to pour forth 
his bitter sarcasms against the man who was still 
ostensibly his leader, even his happiest efforts 
— those most ably masked — had something of the 
aspect of treachery. While admired for their 
talent, they were frequently condemned for their 
supposed malignancy, even by members of the 
Conservative party. But now the case was alto- 
gether different. Sir Robert Peel was openly 
denounced by the agricultural body as a traitor. 
Even the Corn-law Repealers and Radicals, al- 



ADVANCES AS A SPEAKER* 67 

though they praised and profited by the boldness 
of his tergiversation, still did not attempt to deny 
that the complaints of the Conservative party were 
just. In this state of the facts, and also of the 
feelings of the House, Mr. Disraeli found oppor- 
tunity, not merely for a greater licence of speech 
than he had hitherto indulged in, but also for 
more sympathy in his hearers, who before had 
condemned while they admired. In the speeches 
made by Mr. Disraeli during this year we do not 
find the same deliberate attempts to hold Sir 
Robert Peel up personally to ridicule, but we find 
much more bold language used in condemnation 
of his conduct as a statesman. The nature of 
the attack was now different ; it rested on broader 
grounds. Mr. Disraeli had before sought to hold 
up Sir Robert Peel personally to contempt : he 
now sought to excite against him national indig- 
nation. On the very first day of the session he 
commenced his assault. Sir Robert Peel had 
delivered a very long speech ; disfigured by some 
of his most prominent faults, and at the same 
time marked by much of that loftiness of tone 
which had given dignity and almost high elo- 
quence to his later speeches ; in which he had 
explained the circumstances attending his resigna- 
tion and reappointment during the recess. He 
also explained at much length his reasons for pro- 
posing the repeal of the Corn Laws, affecting to 
undervalue the importance of his change of policy, 
and merging all considerations of political turpi- 
tude in the necessity there was for settling the 

e 2 



68 THE RTGHT HON. BENJAMIN DISRAELI, M.P. 

question. Mr. Disraeli delivered on this occasion 
one of his most brilliant and powerful speeches. 
Had all the advocates of protection discharged 
their parliamentary duty with the same vigour, 
pertinacity, and talent, as were shewn by Mr. 
Disraeli, Sir Robert Peel would not have found 
the passing of the Corn Bill so easy a matter as 
he did. 

One hit in this speech was singularly clever 
and applicable at the time. Mr. Disraeli said, 
that he knew of but one parallel case to that 
of Sir Robert Peel, in his sudden desertion of his 
party. It was an event which occurred during 
the last war in the Levant. When that great 
struggle was taking place — when the very exist- 
ence of the Turkish empire was at stake, the 
sultan of that day, a man of great energy and 
fertile resources, determining to make a last effort 
to maintain his empire, fitted out a great arma- 
ment. It consisted of many of the finest ships of war 
that had ever been built. The crews were picked, 
the officers were chosen and selected with the greatest 
care, and they were rewarded before they fought. 
Such an armament had never left the Dardanelles 
since the days of Soliman the Great. The sultan 
embraced the admiral, all the muftis prayed for 
the success of the expedition, just as the muftis in 
England prayed for success at the last general 
election. Away went the armament to battle. 
But what was the consternation of the sultan when 
his lord high-admiral steered at once into the 
enemy's port ! The lord high-admiral was like 



SPEECH AGAINST THE CORN BILL. 69 

the right honourable baronet in that instance, 
much misrepresented. He, too, was called a trai- 
tor. But he vindicated his conduct. He said, 
* True it is I did place myself at the head of this 
valiant armada — true that my sovereign embraced 
me, and that all the muftis in the kingdom prayed 
for the success of the expedition. But I had an 
objection to war. I saw no use in prolonging the 
struggle; and the only reason for my accepting 
the leadership was that I might terminate the con- 
test by betraying my master/ It will readily be 
supposed that a parallel so apt as this, and brought 
forward at so happy a moment, was greedily ac- 
cepted by the House of Commons. It was re- 
ceived with roars of laughter, and it completely 
counteracted for the time the effect of Sir Robert 
PeeFs pompous declarations of his exalted motives 
in sacrificing his former principles. The same 
speech was full of cutting sarcasm and powerful 
invective. Every sentence teemed with thought, 
and the whole oration was delivered with a sus- 
tained energy of which only the most accomplished 
orators are capable. Among the many passages 
in which he attacked Sir Robert Peel, was one in 
which he indignantly cfenied his claims to be con- 
sidered a great statesman. He defined a great 
statesman to be one who connects himself with 
some great idea, not a man who never originates 
an idea, but who watches the atmosphere, and, 
when he finds the wind in a certain quarter, trims 
his course that w r ay. Such a man was as much a 
great statesman as a man who gets up behind a 



70 THE RIGHT HON. BENJAMIN DISRAELI, M.P. 

carriage is a great whip. But the whole speech 
was full of points, highly pertinent to the occa- 
sion. Nor was it wanting in the old spirit of 
ridicule : Mr. Disraeli had one more fling at 
Sir Robert Peel's peculiarities as a speaker. For, 
alluding to the time when he was the leader of the 
Conservative opposition, and when he had no more 
ardent follower and panegyrist than Mr. Benjamin 
Disraeli, he speaks of him with oblivious contempt, 
as having presented the spectacle of a great orator 
before a green table, thumping a red box. In 
the following month, in a speech of almost equal 
power, Mr. Disraeli returned to the charge. In 
this speech he also embodied a striking argument 
in favour of the theory of governing by party, a 
system which, he contended, was a necessary part 
of the constitution, and was endangered by the 
manoeuvring of Sir Robert Peel. 

Mr. Disraeli's speech on the third reading of 
the Corn-bill was the most powerful and sustained 
of all that he had yet delivered. There were fewer 
of those ludicrous, satirical touches, which had so 
often convulsed the House before ; but the whole 
speech exhibited an energy and sustentation not to 
be surpassed by any living speaker. A vein of 
satire ran through the principal parts of the speech, 
— not such satire as had enlivened his earlier 
efforts of the same kind ; but, taking a higher 
range, as an attack on Sir Robert Peel's political 
character, this speech was, perhaps, the most dan- 
gerous and damning that the right honourable 
baronet had ever encountered during his long Career. 



CONTINUED ATTACKS ON PEEL. 71 

It tore the mask from his plausibilities, and shewed 
him c bereft of political consistency, of political 
honour, and even of personal talent commensurate 
with his lofty claims/ In a strain of bitter irony, 
Mr. Disraeli proceeded to acquit Sir Robert Peel 
of meditated deception in his adoption of free^trade 
principles, ' seeing that he had all along, for thirty 
or forty years, traded on the ideas of others ; that 
his life had been one great appropriation clause; 
and that he had ever been the burglar of other 
men's intellects/ He also denounced him as the 
'political pedlar, who, adopting the principles of 
free trade, had bought his party in the cheapest 
market, and sold them in the dearest/ The pero- 
ration to the speech was the most powerful effort 
of the sort Mr. Disraeli had yet made. It pro- 
duced an effect upon the House, to which modern 
oratory is but seldom equal. Had a hurricane 
passed over them the excitement could not have 
been greater. The applause lasted several minutes 
after the speaker had resumed his seat. This was 
a great advance for Mr. Disraeli. He certainly had 
made the House feel with him on this occasion. 
They no longer looked upon him as a man who 
was prostituting great talents to the gratification 
of private malice, but rather as an interpreter of 
their own feelings, and as the avenger of the public 
wrongs of a great portion of their number. As 
the final catastrophe of Sir Robert Peel's adminis- 
tration drew near, the speeches of Mr. Disraeli 
grew more and more bold, his license of attack 
was less and less restrained. It is difficult, now 



72 THE RIGHT HON. BENJAMIN DISRAELI, M.P. 

that the excitement has subsided, to understand 
how the House of Commons could have allowed 
such undisguised and acrimonious personalities to 
be indulged in, as those, which, at times, disgraced 
the speeches of Lord George Bentinck, while they 
disfigured those of Mr. Disraeli. The whole scene 
between Sir Robert Peel and his accusers, on the 
subject of the charge that he had hunted Mr. Can- 
ning to death, was an offence against parliamentary 
decency; and Mr. Disraeli is chargeable with having 
wilfully prostituted his great talents, not merely 
to the gratification of his own personal revenge, 
but also to the more base object of gratifying the 
revenge of others. While paying our full tribute 
of admiration to the extraordinary talent of the 
speech made by Mr. Disraeli on the 15th of June, 
1846, we must protest utterly against such charges 
as were there made against Sir Robert Peel, being 
made the precedent for future attacks by those 
who may not so well know as Mr. Disraeli how to 
hide the more gross passions which dictated them 
under the flowers of rhetoric. The charge made 
against Sir Robert Peel of having garbled the report 
of a speech which he corrected for Hansard, in order 
to remove a stain from his political character, 
recoiled at once upon its promoters. But of Mr. 
Disraeli's share (and it was the principal one) in 
the attack, it is due to him to say, that it exhibited 
oratorical powers of the highest order, that even 
those who were most prepared to admire him, had 
not expected so bold a grappling with so difficult 
a subject as that which formed the theme of his 



PEEL AND CANNING. 73 

speech. The skill with which a veneration for the 
memory of Canning w^s made to cover a virulent 
animosity towards Sir Robert Peel, was without 
parallel in contemporary oratory, save, perhaps, in 
some of the earlier speeches of Brougham. Nor 
was Mr. Disraeli less successful in investing this 
personal contest with something of a lofty dramatic 
interest, in the excitement of which the paltriness 
and unworthiness of the actual charge was lost sight 
of. Still, such is the respect entertained by the 
House of Commons for the personal honour and 
integrity of Sir Robert Peel, that not even the 
extraordinary talent of Mr. Disraeli could make 
his ungracious cause palatable to the House — nay, 
the virulence, the almost savage eagerness he 
showed in his attack, went very far to lessen that 
growing favour which his public spirit and fearless- 
ness had excited, and to throw him back to the 
position he formerly held, as the mere assailant, on 
purely personal grounds, of Sir Robert Peel. There 
was one passage in his peroration, however, which, 
besides a fine allusion to Mr. Canning's genius, fell 
w r ith emphatic force upon his audience. Pointing 
to the impending fate of Sir Robert Peel as a minis- 
ter, he said, that that statesman must feel that it 
was a Nemesis which would dictate the vote and 
regulate the decision they were about to give, and 
that it was a vote that would stamp with its seal 
the catastrophe of a sinister career. This was the 
last attack he made on his now fallen enemy. It 
is to Mr. Disraeli's honour that, either from a noble 
abstinence or a well-calculated tact, he ceased to 



74 THE RIGHT HON. BENJAMIN DISRAELI, M.P. 

assail him from the moment that he was driven 
from office. He spoke several times after the 
accession of the Whigs to power, but he never 
uttered another offensive word towards Sir Robert 
Peel. It seemed as if he had devoted himself to 
the accomplishment of one great task, and, having 
succeeded triumphantly, he forbore to weaken the 
effect. 

When the reader compares the extracts we have 
made, or even the whole of Mr. Disraeli's speeches, 
with our estimate of his parliamentary success, his 
natural impression will be that the right honour- 
able gentleman's powers have been very much over- 
rated. It will be supposed to be impossible that 
with so few assaults, and those partaking more of 
the character of exquisite skill than of great power, 
he should have been able so seriously to damage 
the parliamentary reputation of Sir Robert Pep], 
while so effectually advancing his own ; but the 
singular pointedness and force given by the accom- 
plished manner of Mr. Disraeli to even the most 
subtle touches of his sarcastic faculty, go far, when 
seen or made known, to explain away this apparent 
contradiction. 

The effect of these attacks is matter of history. 
If they did not actually cause the downfall of Sir 
Robert Peel, they at least invested that event with 
an almost dramatic interest. They also placed 
Mr. Disraeli on a vantage ground in the House of 
Commons. He became one of the ' notabilities' 
of that assembly ; and the party of which he then 
became the joint leader rose thenceforth into im- 
portance. 



AS LEADER OF OPPOSITION. 75 



VI. 



rPHE sudden death of Lord George Bentinck 
■£- produced a total change in the position of the 
Tory or Country Party. Whether Mr. Disraeli 
seized on the leadership of that party, or whether 
he was elected to it, — whether, at first, he did or 
did not enjoy the confidence of those who were 
seemingly following his lead, — or whether, like 
another € adventurer/ of our time, he first seized 
on it vi et armis, and afterwards obtained, by a 
sort of half compulsory vote, the sanction of those 
whom he had taken by surprise, — these are ques- 
tions which much agitated the public at the time, 
but which have now lost then interest. Still, their 
contemporaneous discussion, while it consolidated, 
in one sense, the position of Mr. Disraeli, by strip- 
ping it of its fabulous or mythical character, also 
tended to the spread of prejudices against that gen- 
tleman in the public mind. To a policy of mere 
revenge had naturally succeeded a blind impulse 
of mere reaction. The new agitation tended to 
the planting of a fixed idea, and added to the 
difficulty of managing the unmanageable. The 
press used it as a means of annoyance to Mr. 
Disraeli, who was now made responsible for all 
the vagaries, all the statistical and economic 
blunders of his insubordinates ; now threatened 
with deposition from his giddy and uncertain ele- 
vation, whither were to be raised the rampant 
Boeotians aforesaid. If a Nemesis had guided him 
to the destruction of the temporary ascendancy of 



76 THE RIGHT HON*, BENJAMIN DISRAELI, M.P. 

Sir B. Peel, so now like a spirit of fatalistic justice 
dictated his own punishment, and the means 
thereof. The ridicule, the sneers, the sarcasms, 
the damnatory quizzing, that had formed his 
weapons, were now employed against him in his 
turn. Get flogged with scorpions, put your head 
in a hornet's nest, turn Turk and try to increase 
the degree by adding to the quantity of your 
marital happiness, or be the premier of a falling 
party, — do anything rather than provoke the 
attacks of the witty and malicious satirists who 
furnish the public with their diurnal thoughts. 
Mr. Disraeli became the standing target of these 
gentlemen, who sought their weapons in a well- 
stored armory — in the extravagances of his past 
public life. Nor, in the divided state of his own 
party, did his as yet unrecognised claims obtain for 
him a timely support from their organs. Earnest, 
manly opposition he might have borne, as bringing 
with it an admission of his strength ; but the 
harassing warfare of bush-fighting tactics taxed his 
utmost self-possession and courage. If the belief 
that he was born to be the leader of a party had 
not been strong within him, it would have been 
impossible that he could have withstood such 
assaults. The real strength of his tormentors lay 
in the absurdity of the idea (that is to say, in the 
public mind) that 'protection' could ever bo 
restored. Mr. Disraeli was not yet powerful enough 
to destroy this lever bj^ a bold disavowal of any 
such intention ; and thus, while, from motives of 
prudence, he remained silent, he was successfully 



HIS POSITION IX 1819. 77 

saddled with all the ridicule attaching to the peri- 
patetic Boeotian orators, the purblind red-tapists, 
and the mummy financiers of a bygone and buried 
-system. He was like the man with the Turned 
Head — obliged to look hindwards when striving 
to go forwards. 

The effect of all this quizzing was to implant 
in the public mind a notion of the utter absur- 
dity of Mr. Disraeli's Leadership, retrospectively 
strengthened by the still greater absurdity of his 
ever obtaining office, or being entrusted with the 
conduct of any, even the most trifling, portion of 
the nation's affairs. The most muddle-headed 
relicts of squatting Toryism, men guiltless of an 
original idea, and who had passed their days in 
' utter respectability/ were preferred to the bril- 
liant and successful debater, the subtle and in- 
genious tactician. Mr. Disraeli's reputation for 
extraordinary talent very nearly ruined him. 

The session of 1849 opened for Mr. Disraeli, 
under these circumstances, with no very cheering 
prospects. A man less sublimely self-confident 
would have shrunk from a position so doubtful and 
a duty so dangerous. But Mr. Disraeli is gifted 
in a remarkable degree with the quality of per- 
severance. The greater the apparent obstacle, the 
more determined his resolve that it shall be. over- 
come. If the public mind was prepossessed with 
the idea that a great interest, once the predominant 
«ne in the country, was so utterly destroyed as 
even to be unable to stipulate for any conditions, 
but must still lie prostrate at the feet of its success- 



78 THE RIGHT HON. BENJAMIN DISRAELI, M.P. 

ful foe — if the notion of a leader of such a party 
was, as a matter of course, hailed with ridicule and 
contempt, whether that leader were a man dis- 
tinguished in the literary and political w r orld, or 
the inheritor of one of the highest and most 
ancient titles in the country — the only adequate 
antagonists of such impressions must be counter- 
vailing facts. When such a party, and such 
leaders, had risen up from their supposed bed of 
death, and struck a blow, then, and not till then, 
would the public begin to believe in their continued 
existence. Mr. Disraeli set about his work with a 
tact and skill worthy of the most honoured par- 
liamentary leaders, carefully avoiding to commit 
. his party to any course of conduct for the sake of 
temporary triumph, which might necessitate sub- 
sequent retractation or tergiversation. The ex- 
ample of the fate of the last leader of a Tory 
Opposition was enough to warn off less powerful 
and popular chieftains from so dangerous a pre- 
cedent. Mr. Disraeli laid his plan, and commenced 
his approaches, with much caution and prudence, 
and with a foresight which already presaged suc- 
cess. He saw in what lay the weakness of his 
party. He saw that the commercial policy of the 
country alone was not in question, — that his ad- 
versaries had gained their victory and maintained 
their ground, by associating with the name of Tory 
and landlord the imputation of sordid self-interest, 
and that, under the influence of this prejudice, the 
aristocracy were deprived of the advantage of the 
prescriptive claim which they derived from superior 



OPPOSES THE MANCHESTER SCHOOL. 79 

education and position. The first thing necessary 
was to destroy all foundation for such prejudices; 
for the rest ; he might trust to the good sense of 
the British people. 

It was in March, 1818, that Mr. Disraeli first 
opened on the 'Manchester School' the battery 
which afterwards did so much execution in the 
ranks of their parliamentary disciples. It was in 
a debate on the proposal to renew the Income Tax 
(on March 10th of that year) that he first taunted 
Messrs. Cobden and Bright with having created a 
permanent deficiency in the revenue by forcing the 
new commercial system on the country. 

In June of the same year (1848) Mr. Disraeli 
also took a very prominent position in the debate 
on the proposed repeal of the Navigation Laws. 
He sought to elevate the subject above the dead 
level of ordinary Opposition oratory. The House 
had been wearied with dreary and unintelligible 
statistics, and dull, stereotyped prophecies of na- 
tional ruin. Mr. Disraeli touched a chord that 
vibrated with many who remembered the days of 
the elder orators, and even those wdien some now 
living giants in debate were young. 

It was not, however, till the opening of the 
session of 1849 that Mr. Disraeli stood forward as 
the avowed leader of the Opposition. The fact 
seemed so strange and improbable, that men could 
not bring themselves to believe it. But there 
could be no mistake when Mr. Disraeli rose to 
move the amendment to the address, which he did 
in a singularly powerful speech, formed on the old 



80 THE EIGHT HON. BENJAMIN DISRAELI, M.F. 

parliamentary models. But a short time had 
passed since the death of Lord George Bentinck. 
Feelings of friendship, delicacy, and subordination 
had led Mr. Disraeli to act as the lieutenant of 
that noble lord, even while his insight told him 
that a mere policy of revenge or reaction could 
never be advantageous to his party. But with the 
assumption of the leadership, Mr. Disraeli adopted 
a bolder tone and a more practical policy. He was 
now, too, officially recognised by Lord John Russell ,, 
as the accredited person with whom he, as Leader of 
the House, could make arrangements for the con- 
duct of the public business. But Mr. Disraeli did 
not forget in his speech to pay a tribute to the 
memory of his departed friend. 

In the same speech, Mr. Disraeli made a despe- 
rate onslaught on the Manchester School and 
their measures. He took occasion to lay the first 
stone of his new tactics by insisting on ' reciprocity' 
as being ' the first principle of tariffs/ ' Reci- 
procity/ he maintained, ' was the only principle on 
which a large and expansive system of commerce 
could be founded/ He denounced the existing 
system as wrong, because based on a different prin- 
ciple. r You go on lighting hostile tariffs/ he said, 
' with free imports — a course most injurious to the 
commerce of the country/ Thus far Mr. Disraeli, 
by implication, condemned the policy of l reaction/ 
contending, not for the restoration of c Protection' 
as a principle, but for what he conceived to be a 
measure of common justice and common sense, 
justified by the law of self-preservation. Mr. 



i JACOBIN CLUBS/ 81 

Cobden's system of agitation was attacked with 
unsparing hand. Turning to his party, the new 
leader apostrophised them in words of comfort, 
which two years after were proved to be prophetic. 
c Let us not despair V he exclaimed. ' We have, 
notwithstanding all that has occurred — we have 
the inspiration of a great cause. We stand here, 
not only to uphold the throne but the empire; 
to vindicate the industrial privileges of the work- 
ing classes, and the reconstruction of our colonial 
system ; to uphold the Church, no longer assailed 
by masked batteries of appropriation clauses, but 
by unvisored foes; — we stand here to maintain 
freedom of election and the majesty of parliament, 
against the Jacobin manoeuvres of the Lancashire 
clubs. These are stakes not likely to be lost. 
At any rate, I would sooner my tongue were 
palsied before I counselled the people of England 
to lower their tone. Yes; I would sooner quit 
this House for ever, than I would say to the 
people of England that they overrated their posi- 
tion. I leave these delicate intimations to the 
fervent patriotism of the gentlemen of the new 
school. For my part, I denounce their politics, 
and I defy their predictions; but I do so because 
I have faith in the people of England, in their 
genius, and in their destiny/ Here, it must be 
confessed, we have a kind of defiance to which our 
later politicians had not been accustomed. The 
agency called ' public opinion' in this country is 
the safest guide for legislators when that opinion 
is legitimately expressed ; but when it is manu- 



82 THE RIGHT HON. BENJAMIN DISRAELI, M.P. 

factured by agitating demagogues, it ceases to be 
public opinion, and it loses its immunities. Mr. 
Disraeli denounced the spurious article when, 
complaining that ministers had too much yielded 
to what was called public opinion, he said that, 
i Public opinion on the Continent had turned out 
to be the voice of secret societies ; and public 
opinion in England was the clamour of organized 
clubs/ It is not here that we would test the 
truth of these assertions. Our task is confined 
to the fitness of such a course of leadership for 
the then exigencies of the Tory Opposition; be- 
cause we are here only trying Mr. Disraeli's 
claims, without involving ourselves in the vexed 
political question, whether recent events had not 
tended to justify and demand that the ground of 
contest should be shifted from an alleged struggle 
for rents and e dear bread' to some principle more 
worthy the efforts of an ancient aristocracy. It 
is in this respect that we are led to concede to Mr. 
Disraeli the merit of having elevated the position 
of his party, and of having placed it above the 
range of the sneers of the smaller fry of an- 
tagonists. 

VII. 



MR. DISRAELI was now the de facto leader 
of the Tory Opposition, or Country Party, 
in the House of Commons. The position is bril- 
liant and commanding. It has dazzled and gra- 



DUTIES OF AN OPPOSITION LEADER. 83 

tified the ambition of some of the greatest orators 
and most powerful statesmen of past and present 
times. Not to go too far up the stream of par- 
liamentary history, there are the names of Pitt 
and Peel; men who laboured hard and long at 
their constitutional task, by their tactics and their 
oratory forging with patient toil the weapons 
wherewith they made the laws. For, the legiti- 
mate leader of an opposition must not be regarded 
as a mere partisan chief; although it is for him to 
lead the assault or to defend the breach. A man 
called by his party to that high and honourable 
post, and confided in by them while there, be- 
comes an important and necessary part of the 
great constitutional machine. Besides his militant 
functions, he is the interpreter of the growing 
wants or the baffled wishes of at least a consider- 
able portion of the community; the wisdom of 
our system providing that those wants and wishes 
shall be reduced to some practicable shape, so that 
the responsibility of new legislation shall fall on 
those who oppose the old, and thus the nation be 
never left without lawgivers and laws. The 
Leader of the Opposition, therefore, becomes de 
facto a ruler of the people, long before he is so 
de jure. If he rightly comprehends his mission, 
even his strategy must be prospective. Like a 
general manoeuvring in a friendly country, he 
must never gain victory at too great a loss to the 
body politic. In wounding even his political 
adversaries, he runs the risk of too deeply in- 
juring those who may one day be his friends, or 



84 THE RIGHT HON. BENJAMIN DISRAELI, M.P. 

at least the object of his guardianship. If, to 
gain a temporary triumph, he makes too great an 
onslaught on principles, he unsettles the founda- 
tions of his future dominion. Therefore in his 
uttermost hostility there must mingle somewhat 
of prudent caution and paternal care. "While a 
negative, not to say a fictitious policy will serve 
as a pretext for assaults, there must always be a 
positive policy in reserve. To harmonize these 
two, yet not disclose too much of either, demands 
tact, finesse, and political probity of no common 
order ; at least in the present day, when political 
strife is no longer internecine, and the result of 
every fresh struggle adds to the arguments for 
systematic compromise, Here is but the outline 
of the qualifications required in a Leader of 
Opposition, not of the powers and qualities they 
imply. Eloquence, personal influence, tact, stra- 
tegic genius, temper, foresight, magnanimity, 
knowledge, even to the minutest details, — how 
rare in their separate manifestation, and still more 
rare in combination ! 

In accordance with these views of the duties 
of the Leader of an Opposition, Mr. Disraeli's 
next movement was of a more practical character. 

Assuming that the Leader of an Opposition 
must be prepared, not only with the purely strate- 
gic policy which is to gain votes, but also with 
some distinct and sound propositions on which he 
may rest the claims of his party to legislate here- 
after, it will be useful to examine the nature of 
the motion made by Mr. Disraeli on the 8th of 



ins tactics. 85 

March, 1849, which ultimately changed the atti- 
tude and prospects of parties. So long as l pro- 
tection' and f dear bread' could be imputed to the 
Opposition as their party cries, they were sure to 
see a heavy majority arrayed against them : those 
views once abandoned, and a considerable portion 
of that majority lost the bond of cohesion. Upon 
some neutral ground, they might once more be 
appealed to as free agents. In this disposable 
portion of the House might be included a con- 
siderable number of county members and proprie- 
tors who were pledged to Free Trade, because 
they believed in the expansive power of British 
agriculture, and no inconsiderable portion of the 
independent Liberals, who were as little disposed 
to see the manufacturing class as the landed aris- 
tocracy in the ascendant. To these sections of 
the House Mr. Disraeli made a tacit appeal when 
demanding attention to the state of local taxation, 
and of the burthens on land. Basing his case on 
his faith in the common-sense and love of justice 
inherent in the British character, he claimed that 
the agriculturists, having been deprived by the 
late policy of the country of the protection they 
derived from import duties on grain, should be 
relieved from any and all burthens bearing exclu- 
sively on them, and for the imposition or retention 
of which that c protection' had been made the jus- 
tification. It is not here that we w r ould discuss 
the specific value of such a proposition, being only 
engaged in the inquiry so far as to determine 
whether its adoption strengthened Mr. Disraeli's 



86 THE RIGHT HON. BENJAMIN DISRAELI, M.P. 

claims as a tactician and Party Leader. Mr. 
Disraeli's case, true or false, was, that at present 
nearly the whole of the local taxation for national 
purposes fell upon the land, and that one-third of 
the revenue derived from the excise was unjustly 
levied on agricultural produce. The immediate 
effect of this claim on the House w r as not very 
great ; but it was at once admitted that the Op- 
position had now something to go upon more legi- 
'timate than hatred to a name, or a mere blind 
impulse of reaction. The speech in which the 
new proposition was enforced, like all recent ones 
from the same source, aimed at higher objects 
than those immediately avowed. His previous 
attacks on the manufacturing interest had aroused 
its chiefs, and they already began to look on Mr. 
Disraeli as an antagonist, although at present not 
a formidable one. He denounced all attempts to 
legislate for or by a class (another step towards 
the good graces of the public,) and maintained 
that the prosperity of the entire nation depended 
upon the union and prosperity of all classes. Ap- 
plying these views to the leaders of the Manches- 
ter party, he apostrophized them as having all in 
open chorus announced their object to be the mo- 
nopoly of the commerce of the universe, and to 
make this country the workshop of the world. 
That system, and the system of the Tory party, 
were exactly contrary. The landed interest in- 
vited union. They believed that national pros- 
perity could only be produced by the pros- 
perity of all classes. But the Manchester school 



HIS TACTICS. 87 

preferred to remain in isolated splendour and soli- 
tary magnificence. ( But believe me/ lie added, 
1 1 speak not as your enemy when I say, that it 
will be an exception to the principles which seem 
hitherto to have ruled society, if you can succeed 
in maintaining the success at which you aim, with- 
out the possession of that permanence and stability 
which the territorial principle alone can afford. 
Although you may for a moment flourish after 
their destruction — although your ports may be 
filled with shipping, your factories smoke on every 
plain, and your forges flame in every city, I see 
no reason why you should form an exception to 
that which the page of history has mournfully re- 
corded; that you, too, should not fade like the 
Tyrian die, and moulder like the Venetian palaces. 
But, united with the land, you will obtain that 
best and surest foundation upon which to build 
your enduring welfare ; you will find in that inte- 
rest a counsellor in all your troubles, in danger 
your undaunted champion, and in adversity your 
steady customer. I wish to see the agriculture, 
the commerce, and the manufactures of England, 
not adversaries, but co-mates and partners — and 
rivals only in the ardour of their patriotism and 
in the activity of their public spirit/ On July 
the 2nd, of the same year, on a motion to consi- 
der the State of the Nation, he obtained 156 
votes against 296 given to the Government \ and 
on the 20th of the same month, in speaking on 
Mr. Herries' motion for a fixed duty on foreign 
corn, he made a rattling onslaught on Mr. Cobden, 



88 THE RIGHT HOx\. BENJAMIN DISRAELI, M.P. 

in retorting upon him a recent charge, that his 
(Mr. Disraeli's) professions out of doors were in- 
consistent with those he made in Parliament. 
These pitched combats between the Tory leader 
and the chief of the Manchester school became 
now more frequent — a sure sign that the former 
was making way, and consolidating at the same 
time his own position and that of his party. 

Thus, Mr. Disraeli had profited by his oppor- 
tunities. His Leadership, however attained, was 
practically acquiesced in by at least 156 of his fol- 
lowers ; he was recognised in his new capacity by 
the head of the Government, and he was attacked 
in it by Mr. Cobden. He had adroitly shifted the 
tactics of his party from an untenable to a tenable 
ground, and had made strides towards reconciling 
an estranged interest with the nation at large. 

The session of 1850 was also one of advance 
for Mr. Disraeli. In the debate on the Address, 
he followed up the leading idea of his speech at 
the commencement of the previous session, but he 
developed it more boldly. The claim he set up 
for his party was embodied in the general demand 
for t Justice to the land of England/ — to the own- 
ers, to the occupiers, to the cultivators, — to all 
persons dependent upon the land. It was now, 
too, that he attempted to tarn the flank of the 
Manchester school, by adopting their principles, 
and making them serve his own purpose. Accept- 
ing one of the fundamental maxims of the politi- 
cians who profess to be guided by the principles of 
political economy — that the raw material of maim- 



HIS TACTICS. 89 

facture should be untaxed — lie claimed for the land 
that it was the raw material of agriculture, and he 
demanded that this kind of raw material should be 
as free from taxation as any other. In the course of 
one of the most able speeches he had ever yet de- 
livered, Mr. Disraeli proclaimed that, as far as his 
own convictions went, he still condemned the late 
change in our commercial policy. 'A more peril- 
ous, and as he believed a more disastrous, experi- 
ment in politics never yet occurred/ A bolder 
proposition still was that which followed, when he 
declared his conviction that the land of England 
never did at any time depend for its fortune on 
any artificial law whatever. In fact, by this time, 
Mr. Disraeli had acquired no inconsiderable ' hear- 
ing' in the House, while his own party surren- 
dered themselves, as far as outward demonstrations 
went, entirely to his guidance. The cheers of the 
one, and the listening attitude of the other, tempted 
him sometimes to utter propositions a little too 
bold for an assembly whose members counted a 
slight knowledge of past and contemporary history 
among their legislatorial qualifications. Still, on 
the whole, there was moderation, tact, demon- 
strability, and c common sense' in the general prin- 
ciple he laid down. Above all, there was novelty 
and a semblance of logical fairness, in accepting 
the principles of antagonists and arguing from 
them. 

This speech produced a very striking effect, out 
of doors as well as in the House itself. The im- 
mediate result of its ingenious theory and bold 



90 THE RIGHT HON. BENJAMIN DISRAELI, M.P. 

logic was, that Mr. Disraeli in less than three 
weeks after was able to rally 252 votes in favour 
of his motion for the relief of special agricultural 
burthens. The ministers obtained but 273 ; so 
that their majority^ which the year before had 
been 140, was now reduced to 21. 

Still, so strong is the prejudice of the English 
against new men, and so powerful was the influence 
of the antagonist faction, which had possession of 
the ablest and most widely-circulated organs of the 
press, that a result which would have been re- 
garded as almost decisive of the fate of the minis- 
try, had it been arrived at by a recognised pupil of 
party, or a leader who had laboured with patient 
mediocrity through a quarter of a century of hourly 
compromise and inconsistency, produced no ade- 
quate effect at the time upon the surface of poli- 
tical affairs. The public looked on as if it were 
only a phantasmagoria got up for their amusement ; 
and although they regarded the chief magician as 
a monstrously clever fellow, they still could not 
persuade themselves that his work was real. 

Among thinking men and the chieftains of 
party, the effect was different. As for Lord John 
Ptussell, he saw at once the political significance 
of the result of the division. He sedulously went 
out of his way to treat Mr. Disraeli formally and 
officially as leader of the Opposition, thereby 
startling the complacency of the Grahams and 
Gladstones, and paving the way for a reinforce- 
ment of his strength by a future coalition with 
the displaced ministers. In the month of June, 



HIS POSITION IN 1851. 91 

when the Tories and the Grabamites combined to 
attack Lord Pahnerston, Lord John Russell re- 
proached Mr. Disraeli for having, although leader 
of the Opposition, permitted such a subject to be 
initiated by an independent member (Mr. Roebuck) ; 
and, on the 9th of July following, Mr. Disraeli 
received formal investiture in his office, by being 
called upon to second the address of condolence 
to the Duchess of Cambridge. Thus we find 
another session had still further advanced and 
consolidated the position of Mr. Disraeli; so much 
so, that it must be matter of wonder to any 
impartial person, how he could have failed to pro- 
duce upon the public at large an impression in 
some degree corresponding to that which he had 
made within the House of Commons, and in the 
inner ' ring* of the political world. 

The opening of the session of 1851 brought the 
later tactics of the Opposition Leader to their 
climax. In the interval since the dissolution, he 
had addressed some public meetings, and impressed 
on the agriculturists the broad features of his party 
policy; he had made them understand, that as 
they could not ask for a return to c protection/ 
they might at least demand such a diminution of 
their local burthens as would enable them to pro- 
duce more cheaply. In his speech on the 11th 
February, re-enforcing his propositions of the last 
two sessions, he distinctly declared that he had no 
idea of bringing back protection. He demanded 
that no gentleman would support him under the 
idea that his motive was an attempt to bring back 



92 THE RIGHT HON. BENJAMIN DISRAELI, M.P. 

protection in disguise. It ivas nothing of the kind. 
He reminded the House that he had already de- 
clared that ' in that Parliament * he would make 
no attempt to bring back ' the abrogated ' system 
of protection. These assurances, together with 
the doubtful position of the ministry on other 
grounds, procured for Mr. Disraeli 267 votes against 
281 on the Government side; so that ministers 
were left in a majority of only 14. In 1849, they 
had defeated their new antagonist by a majority 
of 140. 

It was quite obvious that matters could not go 
on thus. Yet, with an obliquity of purpose which 
can rarely be imputed to Lord John Russell, the 
minister declined to admit that he had sustained a 
legitimate defeat, in a fair contest, upon an intel- 
ligible proposition. The sole claim of the Whigs 
being that they were a Free-trade ministry, to have 
admitted that they were defeated by the party to 
whose blind hatred to Sir Robert Peel they had 
been indebted for office, would have been very 
seriously to complicate public affairs ; more espe- 
cially at a time when the Great Exhibition de- 
manded as much tranquillity as possible. Ministers 
had a majority of 14 against ' justice to agricul- 
ture/ but the insignificant fact made no impression 
on their minds ; they had a majority of near 400 
on the Ecclesiastical Titles Bill, but found it so 
inadequate, that they resigned. Even John Bull 
could not help seeing i which way the cat jumped/ 
He perceived that the Whig ministry had been 
ignominiously defeated by the Tory champion; 



ABANDONS ' PROTECTION/ 93 

and the ' great fact' thenceforth settled in his 
mind. 

Emboldened by these events, Mr. Disraeli, in 
the earlier portion of the following recess, pushed 
his outposts a little farther. He felt that he 
could now appeal with more confidence to the 
agriculturists than when he was only sketching a 
policy, or ' letting down ' a party. He seemed to 
know that the duty of an Opposition Leader is to 
pull down, but only that he may hereafter build 
up ; that party tactics may do very well for the 
assault, but that there must always be a positive 
policy in reserve. With the merits or demerits of 
this policy we have nothing to do, but much with 
its coherency and with its relation to its ante- 
cedents. Mr. Disraeli had formally abjured ( pro- 
tection ' as usually understood ; but he had a sort 
of ' little go ' of his own, calculated to re-assure 
the agricultural mind. The vote of the House of 
Commons, in the course of the past session, limit- 
ing the duration of the Income-tax to one year, 
furnished him with the groundwork of his scheme* 
He told the farmers that the question was not one 
of 'protection/ but of revenue, that the country 
would not go on paying Income-tax, unless it felt 
sure that the indirect taxation of the country 
would help to pay the national expenses, — that all 
they had to do was to claim such a reduction of 
burthens on land as would affect the revenue, and 
then the country w r ould be compelled to assent to 
a low fixed duty on imports, in order to make up 
the deficiency. This, he told his audiences, would 



94 THE RIGHT HON. BENJAMIN DISRAELI, M.P. 

be a natural and legitimate c protection' to agri- 
culture, without the odium attending a demand for 
dear bread. The most significant fact in con- 
nexion with this new scheme was, that several of 
the most respectable of the Tory county members 
voluntarily offered their adhesion to the new policy, 
in speeches addressed to their constituents. 

When the parliament met for the session of 
1852, the attitude of the Opposition was one of 
reserve. Mr. Disraeli confined himself to a gene- 
ral condemnation of the Reform Bill proposed by 
Lord John Russell, at the same time hinting that 
those with whom he acted were not opposed to 
the extension of the Suffrage, if that extension 
could be carried out on principles just to all 
classes of the community. Much anxiety was 
felt by the public as to the tactics of the Oppo- 
sition, with respect to the great questions of com- 
mercial and fiscal reform, on which they had 
before taken the sense of the House. But cir- 
cumstances rendered it unnecessary for them to 
enter into those questions. Lord John Russell 
was removed from power in consequence of an 
adverse vote of the House of Commons on a 
motion of minor importance, a vote moved by 
Lord Palmerston, the lately dismissed Foreign 
Secretary, and acquiesced in with chivalrous ala- 
crity by the House ; and the Earl of Derby was 
called upon, to form an administration. Almost 
his first act was, to offer to Mr. Disraeli the high 
post of Chancellor of the Exchequer. 

Upon the whole, we may regard the position of 



CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER. 95 

Mr. Disraeli as assured to him, by a right not 
often wielded in these days of nepotism and family 
compact — the right of conquest. For if ever there 
was a man who fought his way to the chief com- 
mand in desperation, every inch of the ground he 
had to occupy disputed, that man is Mr. Disraeli. 
In 1837, hooted down as a bombastic enthusiast, 
nay, as almost a madman ! — in 1851, elevated by 
his own perseverance and parliamentary ability, to 
the chieftainship of the most wealthy, powerful, 
and compact section of the aristocracy, and forcing 
the ministry of the day to resign ! — to resign, after 
having been beaten in fair warfare on the intelli- 
gible proposition, that great injury having been 
inflicted on a class for the general good, the claims 
of that class to compensation and consideration 
should be entertained ; the means of reparation to 
be supplied by a fair and full application of the 
same principles which had brought about the 
original deprivation. Putting party feeling on one 
side, and looking as impartial Englishmen on these 
facts, it seems impossible not to perceive that some 
systematic injustice had been done to Mr. Disraeli, 
if men who had done little or nothing were steadily 
exalted in the public estimation, while a man who 
had achieved so much had his pretensions pertina- 
ciously ridiculed or gravely denied. 

Then comes the question, by what right, beyond 
de facto possession, does Mr. Disraeli hold the 
position he has attained? A retrospect of the 
facts in the foregoing pages would seem to indicate 
that his claims are not inferior to those of most of 



96 THR RIGHT HON. BENJAMIN DISRAELI, M.P, 

his predecessors. He found his party staggering 
under the weight of popular odium, as the selfish 
claimants of special class privileges to the detri- 
ment of the general interests.. Fanatical rivals 
fostered deep-rooted prejudices and strengthened 
fixed ideas among the agriculturists, so that to all 
his protestations of more enlightened views, was 
opposed the fact that his party professed the old 
creed. The chief merit of Mr. Disraeli's tactics 
would seem to have been, that he softened the 
obstinacy of fixed ideas in the agricultural mind, 
by pointing out other channels than a return to 
' protection' for the sense of suffering which, 
rightly or wrongly, existed there. 



VIII. 

REMEMBERING with what dread Jqjin Bull re- 
gards men of a poetical temperament, and how 
indispensable a dull calculating mediocrity has been 
held to be in one who would undertake the manage- 
ment of the public finances, it is not surprising 
that the first impression produced by the appoint- 
ment of Mr. Disraeli to the post of Chancellor of 
the Exchequer, should have been one of hilarity 
rather than even of astonishment. With the 
single exception of Sir Robert Peel, there had been 
since the days of William Pitt a long and uninter- 
rupted line of finance ministers, remarkable for 
nothing but plodding exactitude or ludicrous 
blundering. It had seemed as if the daring spirit 



HIS FITNESS QUESTIONED. 97 

of the English had pursued them even in these 
appointments ; and that the finances of the greatest 
commercial nation in the world had been pur- 
posely left to the most incapable raen, expressly to 
show how elastic and buoyant were the resources 
of the empire even under such an infliction. The 
general impression, when the lists of the new ministry 
made their appearance, was that Mr. Hemes ought 
to have been the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and 
Mr. Disraeli have been put into any office not 
requiring application, financial genius, or habits of 
business. The public only showed itself, in this 
respect, what the public often is, a shortsighted 
public, prejudiced against a man of remarkable 
talent for the very reasons which ought to have 
made him respected. The journals in the interest 
of the liberal party generally were not slow to 
improve the excellent occasion offered by this 
prejudice; and Mr. Disraeli was lampooned in 
every form known to journalism, long before 
the slightest ground had been afforded for a judg- 
ment as to his fitness. If he had been a dull 
mediocrity, a scion of some aristocratic house, or a 
connexion of some great city magnate, he would 
have been accepted as a matter of course; but 
because he was only a man of genius, who had 
distinguished himself in literature, who had studied 
mankind in almost every clime and under almost 
every social aspect, who had raised himself within 
an incredibly short period from a depth of parlia- 
mentary bathos to the highest rank, amongst the 
orators of the House of Commons, and who finally 

G 



98 THE RIGHT HON. BENJAMIN DISRAELI, M.P. 

after successfully combating the favourite leader of 
that assembly, had so skilfully conducted his party 
as to have forced it into power many years before, 
in the ordinary course of things, it could have 
hoped to be there ; because Mr. Disraeli had all 
these claims on the admiration and confidence of 
his fellow-citizens, he was prejudged unfit for a 
post which would have been yielded mechanically 
to the first nonentity who could add up the figures 
composing a budget. 

Yet a little reflection would have satisfied the 
public that nothing was more natural or in accord- 
ance with precedent, than the appointment of Mr. 
Disraeli to the post of Chancellor of the Exchequer. 
In following through the preceding pages his 
career as leader of the Opposition, it will have been 
seen that he mainly rested his tactics on the 
necessity for some revision of taxation. Had he 
been the superficial and unsound person his adver- 
saries proclaimed him, the temptation was enor- 
mous to a man of his temperament, and with such 
facility as an orator, to fall back on the old party 
topics, and endeavour to reinforce the cause he 
had espoused, by appeals to the sentimentalism of 
an eminently aristocratic nation. We know from 
a perusal of his literary works that he had con- 
structed for himself a political theory, based in a 
great measure on these old historical topics. That 
he should in action have abstained from such day- 
dreams, and have adapted his conduct to the 
immediate wants of this working-day world, ought 
to have been accepted as an additional proof of his 



LEADER OF THE HOUSE OF COMMONS. 99 

sound practical sense. If Mr. Disraeli was clever 
enough to bring forward, while in Opposition, 
financial propositions which frittered away a good 
working ministerial majority, what conceivable 
reason, founded on justice and common sense, 
could there be for denying him the capacity to do 
similar things when in power ? 

Almost immediately on the re-assembling of Par- 
liament, after a short adjournment, Mr. Disraeli 
had to exercise his new functions as leader of the 
House of Commons. Even his most inveterate 
censors must have admitted that he assumed and 
discharged those functions with an ease, dignity, 
and aplomb, rarely found among even the most 
accomplished of public men. We speak here not 
merely of the readiness, good temper, and self-pos- 
session manifested by him on all occasions, but 
also of the admirable tact with which he parried 
the fierce assaults of the opposition, alarmed at the 
prospect of an attempt to restore Protection, and 
inspired by a belief that any mode of warfare was 
justifiable, if that sacred thing, Free Trade, appeared 
in danger. His first assailant was Mr. Villiers; 
the paladin of Corn-law repealers, who with a well- 
affected apprehension that there was about to be 
reaction, called upon the Government for an im- 
mediate disavowal of protectionist opinions. Mr. 
Disraeli met the charge with mingled firmness and 
cunning. Referring to his own former declaration 
that he would never propose a return to Protection 
in the then parliament, he proceeded to say that 
the question was one he would not at all touch, 

a 2 



100 THE RIGHT HON. BENJAMIN DISRAELI, M.P. 

until after an appeal had been made to the country. 
The main position of the ministry he described to 
be, that the acts of 1846 had been hasty, partial, 
and unjust towards the landed interest ; and that 
it was for the country to decide whether that in- 
justice should be counteracted. As for Protection, 
he might gain popularity by proposing a small 
fixed duty on corn; this, however, he would not 
promise to do; but, on the other hand, he was not 
to be frightened into declaring that a small duty 
on corn was not as fair a mode of raising revenue 
as a small duty on any other article of consump- 
tion. Mr. Disraeli then proceeded to give a pro- 
gramme of the measures it would be his duty to 
propose; after which he wound up with a bold 
hi quoque, carrying the war into the enemy's camp, 
and as he had been asked what he would do, de- 
manded what would be the policy of a Russell- Gra- 
ham-Cobden cabinet? This last was a home thrust. 
It called up Lord John Russell ; who taunted Mr. 
Disraeli with a want of. frankness, and proclaimed 
the impossibility of a policy on the part of ministers 
which was to consist in standing still. Sir James 
Graham also fired up, and defended Free Trade, 
maintaining that it was impossible for any govern- 
ment of England to abstain from farther carrying 
out the great commercial system commenced by Sir 
Robert Peel. It turned out afterwards, that these 
doughty champions, as also Mr. Gladstone and Lord 
Palmerston, who took a similar course, were really 
fighting the battle of Mr. Disraeli; whose difficulty 
lay, not in his own desire to restore protection, for 






OPINIONS ON THE SUFFRAGE. 101 

which, in the true spirit of Vivian Grey, he cared 
nothing now that it had served his turn, but in 
the obstinate love of some of his followers for a 
protective duty ; which threatened him with serious 
difficulties. 

Having thus started off well, Mr. Disraeli kept 
his ground in the same style during the remainder 
of the session. The opposition were clamorous 
for a dissolution of Parliament, and sought to make 
the public think that the ministers were averse to 
that step, when in fact it was their interest to pre- 
cipitate it. Mr. Disraeli, night after night, had to 
parry the attacks of Lord John Russell, Sir James 
Graham, and Mr. Gladstone, each emulating the 
other in temporary violence. He exhibited so 
much courage and temper, and used his sarcastic 
powers so sparingly, and with such tact, that he 
nightly gained on the good opinion of the House ; 
until at last the coalesced leaders began to see that 
the more violent they were, the more they were 
playing the game of their crafty opponent. An 
attempt, on the part of Mr. Hume, to introduce 
a Reform Bill, including vote by ballot, household 
suffrage, and triennial parliaments, furnished Mr. 
Disraeli with an opportunity of showing that he 
had not forgotten some of his earlier political 
theories. He made a good Tory speech against 
the ballot, triennial parliaments, and such an ex- 
tension of the suffrage as wonld increase the -already 
preponderant influence of the middle class ; but at 
the same time he hinted, that he was favourable to 
giving the franchise to the educated and intelligent 



102 THE RIGHT HON. BENJAMIN DISRAELI, M.P. 

working classes. This was a popular interpreta- 
tion of his old dogma, that the aristocracy and the 
people form the nation. 

It would be wearisome to follow Mr. Disraeli 
through all the many topics with which his able 
and indefatigable assailants compelled him to 
grapple. He met with a coarse but powerful anta- 
gonist in Mr. Bernal Osborne ; and an inveterate 
enemy, Mr. Roebuck, also seized a tempting occa- 
sion to show up what he conceived to be Mr. 
Disraeli's inconsistency ; taunting him with having 
hunted Sir Robert Peel out of office, and now being 
in office himself on false pretences; which pro- 
ceedings were described as a shuffling course, which 
was highly mischievous for various reasons, and 
especially because it created in men's minds a low 
opinion of the morality of public men. 

All these matters, however, had amounted to no 
more than mere skirmishing, in which Mr. Disraeli 
exhibited readiness, tact, and self-possession, such 
as might have been expected from one who had 
already won his parliamentary position. The atten- 
tion, and in no small degree the curiosity, of the 
public, were now concentrated on a more important 
effort which it was Mr. Disraeli's duty to make. The 
period for the financial statement had arrived ; and 
now was to be decided the great question between 
the detractors of the right honourable gentleman and 
his admirers, whether he was equal to the position 
he had assumed. On the one hand, his brilliant 
antecedents being considered, a partial succes 
would not be sufficient : on the other, the ill-judged 



HIS FIRST c BUDGET' SPEECH. 103 

malevolence of his adversaries had referred him to 
so low a rank as to financial ability, that almost 
any comparison ought to have been in his favour. 
As mankind are ever more ready to listen to 
detraction than to eulogy, the adverse opinion had 
found the greater currency with the vulgar, and 
with those inferior minds whose political passions 
colour their perceptions; and the odds were con- 
sidered to be rather in favour of a fiasco. 
The result disappointed all but those who had 
accustomed themselves to reckon up the talents of 
Mr. Disraeli, irrespective of his or their political 
preferences. Mr. Disraeli's e Budget' speech was 
universally admitted to be a masterly exposition. 
It took both friends and foes by surprise : neither 
were prepared for so candid and liberal an admis- 
sion of the real benefits conferred on the people 
by the remission of customs' duties; still less did 
they expect to find the dull and dreary topics of 
finance handled with so consummate a skill, that 
w r hile the practical was never lost sight of, the in- 
teresting and even the entertaining were sufficiently 
introduced to relieve the tedium of a long speech. 
As usual, the right honourable gentleman's motives 
and purposes seem to have been alike misunder- 
stood. The multitude looked on the admissions of 
fact as a recantation of all past censures on Free 
Trade ; whereas they amounted to little more than 
the statement of a self-evident proposition — namely, 
that it is better for a people to have plenty and 
cheapness than dearness and scarcity. In pro- 
portion to the popular belief, that Mr. Disraeli had 



104 THE RIGHT HON. BENJAMIN DISRAELI, M.P. 

betrayed his principles and his party, was the 
popular gratitude. The people had for years been 
taught a sordid and mendicant view of affairs : 
they had learned to estimate public men not by 
their talents, or the moral excellence of their 
purposes, but by the amount of benefit they could 
extract from them. Mr. Disraeli so far shared in 
a common degradation. 

Regarded, however, from another point of view, 
this c budget' speech was really a remarkable expo- 
sition. Mr. Disraeli's ruse to gain the most sweet 
voices of the multitude in the market-place, and to 
gag the tribunes of the people, was a perfectly 
pardonable one, if we consider the ingenious de- 
traction and misrepresentation to which himself 
and his friends had been exposed. Ever since 
the accession of the new Government, there had 
subsisted between the Whigs, the Radicals, and 
the followers of Sir James Graham, a coalition of 
which the sole bond of union was the preservation 
of free trade, by which appears to have been un- 
derstood the non-imposition of any duty on corn, 
whether for Protection or revenue. The slightest 
indication on the part of the Tories of a contrary 
wish, would have been the signal for a joint and 
adverse vote of want of confidence, on the sole 
point whereon the new opposition could hope to 
agree. In all controversies, religious as well as 
political, the most fatal of all arguments is a de- 
finition. If each party really understood what 
itself and its antagonist were disputing about, 
the pleasure of the strife would be precluded. 



EULOGIZES FREE IMPORTS. 105 

The Tories were suffering under a skilful use 
by their opponents of popular misconceptions; 
they were universally believed to be engaged in a 
dark plot for the restoration of Protection, although 
Mr. Disraeli had months before, both in express 
terms and by implication, renounced a reactionary 
policy. In this state of things, the best service 
Mr. Disraeli could do to his party was by a word 
to break up the coalition; the best service he 
could render to the public was to let them see 
that, however much the Tories might be possessed 
with a devil, there was in Free Trade the virtue to 
cast it out. Nothing short of very strong mea- 
sures would serve this purpose. A giant blow 
between the eyes is needful to fell an ox. An 
English mind cannot be persuaded that you really 
mean to fight, until the first blow be struck. Mr. 
Disraeli, being a shrewd and sagacious observer of 
the character of his countrymen, felt the absolute 
necessity of making them conscious that he really 
was in earnest. Accordingly, he did not merely 
admit the practical benefits of reduced import 
duties, but pronounced a handsome panegyric on 
the system, which now for nearly seven years had 
prevailed. At this point, however, his recantation 
or inconsistency stopped; and the public were 
really so delighted to find that they were not 
going to be made a meal of by those dreadful 
Protectionists, that they totally overlooked the 
other far more important characteristics of Mr. 
Disraeli's financial exposition. It is important to 
a right understanding of Mr. Disraeli's character, 



106 THE RIGHT HON. BENJAMIN DISRAELI, M.P. 

fully to comprehend the scope and bearing of that 
speech. The English people can now afford to do 
justice to this very remarkable man. It is, indeed, 
their interest to do so, seeing that he must in- 
evitably take an important part in the future 
affairs of this country, and that his power of ren- 
dering himself useful will mainly depend on the 
confidence placed in him. We have a theory as 
to this budget speech, quite different from that 
which regards it as only a recantation of Protec- 
tionist opinions ; and we dwell somewhat on a past 
topic, because it seems to afford the key to Mr. 
Disraeli's political position. 

In one of his first ministerial speeches, Mr. 
Disraeli promised the public a fair and honest 
statement of the real financial position of the 
country. Without the slightest intention to dis- 
parage his predecessors, we may say that foregoing 
budgets had rested rather on sanguine hopes than 
on actual facts. John Bull discovered, from year 
to year, that he had a balance at his bankers' 
varying from a million to two millions and a half; 
a fact which so pleased him that he did not always 
inquire whence the money came. A Chancellor of 
the Exchequer always prefers, if he can, to be the 
bearer of good tidings ; thinking himself morally 
absolved from the blame of any little sanguine 
hallucinations, if he places all the figures honestly 
before the public, leaving them to use their pencil 
and slate. This had been the agreeable task of 
previous finance ministers, while the House of 
Commons triennially renewed the Income-tax ; 



NEW PRINCIPLE OF TAXATION. 107 

but a rude stop had in the previous year been put 
to the indulgence, by the sudden refusal of the 
House of Commons to renew the Income tax for 
more than one year. This enabled Mr. Disraeli 
to point out to the House of Commons that the 
aforesaid balance at John Bull's bankers was de- 
rived from a species of forced contribution as yet 
anomalous in character, and that were that source 
of revenue finally withdrawn, there would be 
not a surplus, but a frightful deficiency. Of 
course, every one knew that the Income-tax must 
be renewed in some form or other, and that the 
question hereafter to be decided was in what shape 
it should be imposed ; but it was important that 
the general public should know the difference be- 
tween an actual surplus on the annual accounts, 
and a surplus paid out of capital. Mr. Disraeli 
did good service to the State by simply expounding 
the real position of affairs, and making it clear to 
the public that the time was come, when they must 
choose between direct and indirect taxation — in 
other words, make the Income-tax permanent. 
Nor was this all. Mr. Disraeli shadowed forth a 
principle in connexion with the mode of raising 
that tax. Unable to commit himself too plainly 
in language, he said enough to indicate the direc- 
tion of his mind. With the masterly lucidity 
which Mr. Disraeli, like Sir Robert Peel, can com- 
mand, when it is not his purpose to mystify, he 
laid it down as a principle, that direct taxation 
must be as general and universal as indirect 
taxation, or it would be odiously unjust, and tan- 



108 THE RIGHT HON. BENJAMIN DISRAELI, M.P. 

tamoimt to a system of confiscation. In other 
words, he objected to the exemption from direct 
taxation of a large class of persons who directly 
profit by indirect taxation. This was an impor- 
tant announcement quite overlooked by the public, 
greedy to keep the fruit of Free Trade ; yet it was 
a declaration that the principle of justice ought to 
be applied • that there should be no limit to direct 
taxation, but the tangibility of the taxee ; and that 
if the people now specially exempted from indirect 
as well as direct taxation were admitted to have 
profited so largely by the abolition of the one, 
they ought, in common fairness, to contribute at 
least something towards the other. 

These points made, and the usual routine of a 
finance statement having been gone through by 
Mr. Disraeli, with great clearness and grasp of his 
subject, Mr. Disraeli was enabled to suggest to the 
House, that the opinion of the public ought to be 
taken, on the abstract question as between direct 
and indirect taxation, and that pending his financial 
exposition in the new parliament, the House should 
permit matters to remain in statu quo, renewing 
the Property and income-tax for one year only. 
This was immediately agreed to. The financial 
debut of the new Chancellor of the Exchequer was, 
after the Palmerston drama, the most interesting 
event of the session. The hearty admiration of 
the English for ability, obtained for him an enthu- 
siastic reception. He was constantly interrupted 
by spontaneous cheering, which was prolonged 
when he sat down. Compare this triumph with 



MEETS WITH A DEFEAT. 109 

the fiasco of 1837, and the extraordinary self- 
regenerating power of Mr. Disraeli will become 
the more apparent, especially when we reflect that 
these gratifying marks of approval were not offered 
in return for any flashy political speech, but were 
attributable to the conviction of the House, that 
the speaker had not exaggerated his powers when 
assuming the office of Chancellor of the Exchequer, 
and that he had carried off the applause of the 
House of Commons, on the ground whereon it is 
proverbially most tenacious of its own superior 
wisdom. 

It is unnecessary to follow Mr. Disraeli through 
all the details of his ministerial conduct as leader 
of the House of Commons. Each day, each week, 
he rose in the good opinion of the House, and on 
several occasions commanded powerful majorities. 
In one instance alone did he sustain a defeat ; and 
it is not surprising that his discomfiture mainly 
arose from the recalcitration of his own supporters 
at his unexpected homage to Free Trade. The 
country gentlemen as little understood the true drift 
of the budget speech in their favour, as the multitude 
out of doors comprehended it in another way. 
When Mr. Disraeli made a proposal, to transfer to 
the West Riding of Yorkshire four seats declared 
vacant on account of bribery, he found himself 
left in a minority, by the desertion of a large 
number of his own followers; nevertheless, he 
came through with flying colours. In the mean- 
while, Mr. Disraeli had published an address to 
the electors of Buckinghamshire, in which he put 



110 THE RIGHT HON. BENJAMIN DISRAELI, M.P. 

the finishing stroke to the labour of the last four 
years, that of letting his party down from their 
untenable protectionist opinions, and reconciling 
them to some course of action in harmony with 
public opinion. The following passage from his 
published address is worthy of being preserved, as 
the last knell of ' Protection/ He said : — 

' The time has gone by when the injuries which 
the great producing interests endure can be alle- 
viated or removed by a recurrence to the laws 
which, previously to 1846, protected them from 
such calamities. The spirit of the age tends to 
free intercourse, and no statesman can disregard 
with impunity the genius of the epoch in which he 
lives. But every principle of abstract justice, and 
every consideration of high policy, counsel that the 
producer should be treated as fairly as the con- 
sumer; and intimate that when the native pro- 
ducer is thrown into unrestricted competition with 
external rivals, it is the duty of the legislature in 
every way to diminish, certainly not to increase, 
the cost of production. It is the intention of her 
Majesty's ministers to recommend to parliament, 
as soon as it is in their power, measures which 
may effect this end. One of the soundest means, 
among others, by which this result may be accom- 
plished, is a revision of our taxation. The times 
are favourable to such an undertaking; juster 
notions of taxation are more prevalent than here- 
tofore ; powerful agencies are stirring, which have 
introduced new phenomena into finance, and altered 
the complexion of the fiscal world ; and the possi- 



FINALLY ABANDONS PROTECTION. Ill 

bility of greatly relieving the burdens of the com- 
munity, both by adjustment and reduction, seems 
to loom in the future/ 

These views Mr. Disraeli explained still more 
practically in subsequent speeches on the hustings; 
and when re-elected for Buckinghamshire, he found 
himself at the head of the largest minority in the 
House of Commons, composed of gentlemen fully 
aware of his views and intentions, and precluded 
by that knowledge from bringing against him the 
charge of inconsistency, so successfully wielded by 
himself in former years against Sir Robert Peel — a 
charge which the admirers of the deceased states- 
man could meet with the plea of overwhelming 
necessity, while Mr. Disraeli lies open to the 
imputation of having very skilfully contrived that 
his own personal ambition should jump with the 
interests of his party and the wishes of the public. 
Looking back at the great political events of the 
last five and twenty years, and seeing how every 
influential public man has been compelled to 
abandon early opinions, and advocate policy that 
was not self-chosen, it seems quite unnecessary to 
defend Mr. Disraeli against the charge of incon- 
sistency. He who aspires to be a statesman must 
duly think and act for the good of the state. 



r 



IX. 

remains to give some traits of Mr. Disraeli 
as an orator. 
The whole bearing of Mr. Disraeli, and his dis- 



112 THE RIGHT HON. BENJAMIN pisRAELI, M.P. 

\ 

tinctive features as a speaker, are so peculiar, as to 
render the task of description very difficult, at least 
in order to convey to the mind of the reader any 
clear and tangible idea of the man. If He have 
already seen some of the admirable sketches made 
of Mr. Disraeli by H. B., it will much facilitate 
his comprehension. 

There is decided character about the whole 
external of Mr. Disraeli, yet it is most difficult to 
determine in what it especially consists. The first 
impression conveyed to your mind, as, with clothes 
shaped apparently with too much care for effect, 
and those long flakes of curling black hair that 
can hardly be distinguished from the ringlets of a 
woman, he walks hastily, with a Self-absorbed air, 
and a quick, short, shuffling gait, towards his seat, 
— is that of an effeminate, nay, almost an emascu- 
late affectation. There seems to be a dandyism, 
not merely of the body, but of the mind also. We 
usually associate the idea of pride with an erect 
crest, a lofty gaze, a hauteur of bearing. Strange to 
say, Mr. Disraeli's bearing produces the same im- 
pression, from a totally opposite cause. He has an 
habitual stoop, and there is that in his bearing and 
carriage which might be mistaken for humility. 
He has also an air of self-absorption, which does 
not appear natural; rather it seems to arise from 
an affected indifference to the gaze or the observa- 
tion of others. It is not the less pride, though 
not of the most noble order. You can see glimpses 
of an evidence that self-esteem is no stranger to 
his mind. In spite of the assumed stolidity, you 



HIS CHARACTERISTICS. 113 

may detect the self-constraint and the furtive 
regards of a very vain man, who is trying to appear 
as if he were not vain at all. Although his eyes 
are downcast, they have not the downcast look of 
modesty, but rather of a sort of superciliousness, 
which is the most striking expression on the face. 
He seems to look down, because he considers it too 
much trouble to look up. 

But a further study leads you to think that 
your first impressions have been erroneous. You 
see that the intellectual preponderates in Mr. 
Disraeli's organisation, and, by degrees, you begin 
to believe that he is as much absorbed as he seems 
to be. Like Sir Robert Peel, he appears to isolate 
himself — to have no associates in the House, 
except those forced on him by the immediate 
necessities of party. This isolation and self- 
absorption are equally conspicuous, whether he 
is quiescent or in activity. Observe him any- 
where about the House, in the lobbies, or 
in the committee-rooms; you never see him in 
confidential communication with any one. All 
inlets of information and impression seem as if 
they were violently closed up by an effort of the 
will. Yet we know from Mr. Disraeli's speeches 
and writings, that he is keenly alive to the slightest 
and most impalpable changes going on around him 
— that, in fact, his intellect must be ever on the 
watch, although, to an observer, it seems to be in 
a state of self-imposed torpor. See him where you 
will, he glides past you noiselessly, without being 

H 



114 THE RIGHT HON; BENJAMIN DISRAELI, M.P. 

apparently conscious of the existence of externals, 
and more like the shadow than the substance of a 
man. Involuntarily, he comports himself like one 
possessed by a melancholic monomania, and who has 
no natural relations with the realities of life. When 
he is speaking, he equally shrouds himself in his own 
intellectual atmosphere. You would think he paid 
no regard to the thought of whom he was address- 
ing, but only to the ideas he was enunciating in 
words. Still with downcast eyes, still with what 
may almost be called a torpor of the physical 
powers, he seems more an intellectual abstraction 
than a living, breathing man of passions and sym- 
pathies. If some one of his friends interrupts him 
to offer a friendly suggestion, or to correct a mis- 
statement of facts, the chances are that he will not 
notice him at all, or, if he does, that it will be with 
a gesture of impatience, or with something like a 
snarl, as, when a man is grinding a hand-organ, 
if his hand suddenly be stopped, the pipes utter a 
slight discordant moan. This singular self-absorp- 
tion betrays itself even when he is in a sitting 
posture. You never see him gazing around him, 
or lolling back in his seat, or seeking to take his 
ease as other men do in the intervals of political 
excitement. He sits with his head rigid, his body 
contracted, his arms closely pinned to his side, as 
though he were an automaton. He looks like one 
of those stone figures of ancient Egypt, that embody 
the idea of motionless quiescence for ever. The 
mental seems in him to subjugate, if not to super- 
sede, the moral. The exercise of the thinking 



HIS CHARACTERISTICS. 115 

faculty appears alone sufficient to satisfy the crav- 
ings of his nature. He lives in a world of his own, 
and feeds that appetite for association which is 
natural to man, with the fruit of his own thoughts. 
He seeks dominion rather by the force of his 
talent than by the interchange of political or per- 
sonal sympathies. 

We have said that the intellectual predominates 
in his organisation; yet his countenance, while 
really it is highly intellectual, belies the ordinary 
rules of the physiognomists. It is scarcely an 
index to the mind. The soul does not look out 
from the eyes. The real character of the mind is 
not stamped on the countenance, but the natural 
temper seems violently restrained or constrained. 
Sometimes the traits are those of one self-con- 
demned to a perpetual abstinence from passion, or 
even from the indulgence of that natural candour 
of the human character to which the physical 
organisation is the obedient slave, and which stamps 
the impress of the passions, or of the intellectual 
or moral propensities, upon the features. Mr. 
Disraeli embodies in these respects the popular 
ideas of the Jesuit — of one who dares not be natural 
even to himself. Shylock entering on the great 
judgment- scene, when triumphing in the conscious- 
ness of suppressed power, presents us with some 
prototype (not wishing to be personal), as far as 
external action is concerned, in his having the same 
stooping, crouching gait, with the same furtive 
glances of downcast eyes, the same flashes ever and 
anon, denoting some concealed, fixed purpose. 
h 2 



116 THE RIGHT HON. BENJAMIN DISRAELJ, M.P. 

Both the features and the expression of Mr. Dis- 
raeli are most puzzling. There is a something in 
the aspect and whole bearing which speaks of in- 
tellectual power, yet the face is often abandoned 
to an expression, or rather a no-expression, that 
almost amounts to fatuity. The countenance 
seems to s hang/ as it were : the forehead hangs 
(though the eye-brows are raised) ; the eyes hang, 
the mouth haings, the chin hangs. The head 
hangs downwards on the chest, the shoulders 
hang, and the whole body stoops. There is no 
appearance of a sustaining spirit — of that intel- 
lectual or moral dignity, which distinguishes man 
from the animals. The gait, looked at physically 
only, is a merely plodding movement ; yet there is 
in it nothing loose or commonplace ; but a vigour 
and precision of step gives it character, and makes 
it harmonise in singularity with the rest of th& 
external attributes. It was probably originally an 
affectation, that has grown into an unconquerable 
habit. Upon the whole, after the most attentive 
study of the impenetrable countenance, in repose, 
and an attempt to comprehend what may be called 
the physiognomy of the person, and those uncon- 
scious habits which so much betray the real cha- 
racter of ordinary men, the utmost you arrive at 
in determining the characteristics of the whole, is a 
pervading air of self-possession and impassibility, 
implying the existence of powers of mind, not dis- 
played, but latent. Most remarkable men carry, 
as it were, a sort of table of contents about them 
in their external aspect, but in Mr. Disraeli this is 
a blank leaf. 



AS AN ORATOR. 117 

As an orator, Mr. Disraeli cannot be pronounced 
highly eloquent. In even his finest declamatory 
passages he fails to excite the feelings, although 
he often astonishes the mind, and stimulates the 
imagination. They more often suggest thought 
than touch the sympathies. He never abandons 
himself to his theme, but always holds it in sub- 
jection to his purpose. Yet this abandonment, re- 
strained by prudence and good taste, often achieves, 
in master hands, the most remarkable triumphs of 
oratory. Mr. Disraeli delivers his best periods as 
if they were a conned task. Generally, his de- 
livery is not good or effective, — at least, as com- 
pared with that of Mr. Sheil or Lord Derby. 
But although, critically, it is wanting in graces, 
yet we are far from saying that, taken in con- 
nexion with his peculiar idiosyncrasy, it has not 
character and force. In both voice and man- 
ner there is much monotony. He wants variety 
in action, gesture, expression, and elocution, — 
always excepting w r hen he breathes his sarcastic 
vein. Perseverance is one of the leading traits 
of his oratory, as it has also distinguished his 
public career. Like Mr. Villiers, he hammers his 
sentences into the mind of his audience. His 
whole manner, as an orator, is peculiar to himself. 
It would scarcely be tolerated in another; he 
seems so careless, supercilious, indifferent to the 
trouble of pleasing. He can be compared, in 
these respects, with no other speaker in parliament. 
Mr. Pemberton, as a,n advocate at the bar, most 
resembled him in the physical attributes of his 
style, but in nothing else. His action, where he 



118 THE RIGHT HON. BENJAMIN DISRAELI, M.P. 

has any, is ungraceful; nay, what is worse, it is 
studiously careless — even offensively so. With 
his supercilious expression of countenance, slightly 
dashed with pomposity, and a dilettanti affectation, 
he stands with his hands on his hips, or his thumbs 
in the arm-holes of his waistcoat, while there is a 
slight, very slight, gyratory movement of the upper 
part of his body, such as you will see ball-room 
exquisites adopt when they condescend to prattle a 
flirtation. And then, with voice, low-toned and 
slightly drawling, without emphasis, except when 
he strings himself up for his c points/ his words 
are not so much delivered as that they flow from 
the mouth, as if it were really too much trouble 
for so clever, so intellectual — in a word, so literary 
a man to speak at all. You think that he under- 
values his subject, and looks down upon his audi- 
ence; and although you, at least, perceive that all this 
is but a bad habit, still it is offensive in its effect. 
So much for his ordinary level speaking. When 
he makes his c points/ the case is totally different. 
Then his manner changes. He becomes more 
animated, though still less so than any other 
speaker of equal power over the House. You can 
then detect the nicest and most delicate inflections 
in the tones of his voice ; and they are managed, 
with exquisite art, to give effect to the irony 
or sarcasm of the moment. Much, not only of 
the force, but also of the venom of his sarcasms, 
depends upon this fine management of his voice, 
and the almost imperceptible motion with w r hich 
it is accompanied, and a subtle harmony is found 



AS AN ORATOR. 119 

to exist between the two, such as one remem- 
bers to have seen in Young's performance of 
Iago. In the by-play of oratory, Mr. Disraeli is 
without a rival, — not forgetting, however, that, as 
yet, his range has been limited. But, in wdiat he 
has done, neither Lord Derby nor even Mr. Sheil 
has approached him, if we bear in mind the 
amount of effort relatively betrayed. In conveying 
an inuendo, an ironical sneer, or a suggestion of 
contempt, which courtesy forbids him to translate 
into words, — in conveying such masked enmities 
by means of a glance, a shrug, an altered tone of 
voice, or a transient expression of face, he is un- 
rivalled. Not only is the shaft envenomed, but it 
is aimed with deadly precision by a cool hand and 
a keen eye, with a courage fearless of retaliation. 
He will convulse the House by the action that 
helps his words, yet leave nothing for his victim to 
take hold of. He is a most dangerous antagonist 
in this respect, because so intangible. And all the 
while you are startled by his extreme coolness and 
impassibility. You might almost think he was a 
mere machine, uttering sentiments by rule, so 
does he divorce the intellectual from the moral, 
and suppress even the natural physical signs of 
exultation at success. You might suppose him 
wholly unconscious of the effect he is producing; 
for he never seems to laugh or to chuckle, how- 
ever slightly, at his own hits. While all around 
him are convulsed with merriment or excitement at 
some of his finely wrought sarcasms, he holds him- 
self ? seemingly, in total suspension, as though he 



120 THE RIGHT HON. BENJAMIN DISRAELI, M.P. 

had no existence for the ordinary feelings and 
passions of humanity; and the moment the shouts 
and confusion have subsided, the same calm, low, 
monotonous, but yet distinct and searching voice, 
is heard still pouring forth his ideas, while he is 
preparing to launch another sarcasm, hissing hot, 
into the soul of his victim. There is something 
feline in the stealthy steadiness with which he 
maintains the level theme of his speech till 
the moment when he is to pounce on his prey. 
He aims much at surprises, though striving to 
conceal this part of his art. It is a great pride 
with him to introduce his ' hits* so suddenly that 
neither his victim nor his audience has the least 
suspicion at what moment the bolt will fall. 
The scenes in the House during his attacks on 
Sir Robert Peel were intensely dramatic, espe- 
cially at first, before his audience grew accus- 
tomed to expect great things from him. It was 
amusing to see the perfect complacency with w r hich 
Sir Robert Peel would sit in his place as prime 
minister, so confident in his own strength as to 
think himself able to despise his assailant; nay, 
even to sit and listen for his own amusement — 
perhaps, to laugh at the extravagances or the 
' high nonsense* of his bombastical antagonist. 
And it was equally striking to see the perfect self- 
reliance, the cool confidence, the audacious courage, 
with which Mr. Disraeli would advance to the 
assault on a reputation and influence consolidated 
by years of parliamentary triumph. Nor if the 
actors in this drama were thus conspicuous and 



AS AN ORATOR. 121 

marked in character, was it the less interesting to 
watch their audience also, — to observe the com- 
parative indifference, not unmingled with a mali- 
cious curiosity, with which they regarded for a long 
time both the speaker and his subject, changed, as 
it suddenly and permanently became, into a sus- 
tained excitement and attention, as Mr. Disraeli's 
deliberate process of tormenting, and at last, of 
torturing his antagonist, became developed from 
month to month, and from session to session. 
The command he by degrees acquired over what, 
we fear, must be called their baser passions, was 
wonderful. For him to rise late, in a stormy 
debate, cool, even to iciness, amidst the fever-heat 
of party atmosphere around, was suddenly to arrest 
all passions, all excitement, all murmurs of conver- 
sation, and convert them into one absorbing feel- 
ing of curiosity and expectation. They knew not 
on whom to fix their watch, — whether on the 
speaker, that they might not lose the slightest 
gesture of his by-play, or whether they should 
concentrate their attention on his distinguished 
victim, whom he had taught them almost to regard 
with levity, because he had not failed to exult over 
the testiness and irritability which such malevolent 
assaults had compelled him to betray. The power 
of the orator was more confessed, perhaps, in the 
nervous twitchings of Sir Robert Peel, and his 
utter powerlessness to look indifferent, or to con- 
ceal his palpable annoyance at the attacks made 
on him with such undisguised spitefulness, yet with 
such withering force, than even in the delirious 



122 THE RIGHT HON. BENJAMIN DISRAELI, M.P. 

laughter with which the House accepted and sealed 
the truth of the attacks, — followed, in justice, let 
us add, by a sort of compunction that they should 
thus have joined in ridiculing their former idol. 
This positive ascendancy of Mr. Disraeli was con- 
fined to the time when his attacks on Sir Robert 
Peel were responded to by the mingled apprecia- 
tion and party-feeling of the House ; but, while it 
lasted, it was such as no living orator has ever 
attained, except Lord Brougham in his Tribunitian 
days, or Lord Derby when in the House of Com- 
mons. The orator's craft was shown in his so 
clearly detecting the favourable occasion, and the 
vulnerable points^-of his victim, quite as much as 
was his skill in his triumphant execution of his 
plan of operations. 

Those speeches of Mr. Disraeli which have 
not been especially devoted to these objects 
deserve praise for their intrinsic merits. Their 
quality is often of a high order. Some of them, 
for argument, for their general conception, and. for 
their diction, will rank with the finest efforts of 
contemporary orators. The range, both of his 
subjects and his mode of treating them, is Higher 
than that of most speakers. His views of con- 
temporary politics are lofty, and his historical 
strokes elevated above the narrowness of compre- 
hension and passion for details, which characterise 
the present time. He has a singular command of 
language, in the strictest sense of the term. All 
his speeches betray evidences of the exercise of the 
imaginative faculty, and they are often tinged with 



AS A POLITICIAN. 123 

the colouring of foreign and Oriental habits of 
thought. He resembles Mr. Macaulay in his dis- 
position to infuse historical illustrations and en- 
larged views of politics into the debates of the 
hour, while he resembles Mr. Sheil and Lord 
Derby in his ironical and sarcastic powers; 
though neither of those orators, although so 
accomplished, attained to his combined power of 
language and action/ Although the declamatory 
passages in his speeches are still sometimes inflated, 
yet they exhibit such a marked improvement on 
his early efforts, that the most sanguine hopes may 
be entertained that he will at last arrive at a per- 
fect taste in this respect. He has shown a great 
variety of pow r ers. He can be argumentative, or 
business-like, when necessary, with as much ease, 
though, of course, with not so brilliant an effect, 
as he can be sarcastic. On subjects of an abstract 
order, where, for instance, the theme is literature, 
or science, or philosophy, he rises to the height 
that is due, and attains a loftiness of thought and 
purity of style, while his eloquence becomes more 
graceful in proportion to the care with which he 
has been able to study his oratory as an art. 

As a politician, Mr. Disraeli has been gradually 
developing, each year making more progress and 
taking a higher tone than before. At first, in his 
parliamentary displays, he exhibited much exagge- 
ration of thought and language, while his manner 
was affectedly pompous. He shot high, and almost 
always missed his aim. There was an absurd 
grandiloquence very unbecoming in so young a 



124 THE RIGHT HON. BENJAMIN DISRAELI, M.P. 

speaker. But a sudden change came over him. 
He had before mistaken his red and blue fire for 
real splendour : a purer taste now superseded these 
delusions of a diseased imagination. He put him- 
self in training, and soon his strong natural talent 
and decided originality, with this aid, triumphed 
over the wayward and capricious habits he had 
formerly allowed his mind to indulge in. He 
rapidly retraced his false steps, and founded his 
new reputation. His sarcastic attacks on Sir 
Robert Peel, were the first efforts of his improved 
powers that seriously attracted the attention of the 
House. Until then a strong prejudice had pre- 
vailed against him, which he overcame by sheer 
force of genius. Session after session, month after 
month, he went on consolidating his new-found 
strength and reputation, while, as time advanced, 
and circumstances favoured, he took a higher 
ground, and entered on a wider field than that 
N.which personalities, however clever or successful, 
can ever afford. jHis speeches grew more states- 
manlike ; and although the principles on which he 
framed his theory of a political system were not 
popular, they were at least intelligible. Moreover, 
he was the first to expose that ascendancy of poli- 
tical materialism which has been so fatal to the 
character of our public men, by lowering the tone 
of statesmen, and debasing their policy. He long 
sustained an eloquent and indignant protest against 
that reign of red-tapeism — that fruitless incubation 
of complacent mediocrity, which has for many 
years repressed political genius. He Mould not 



CONCLUSION. 125 

worship false gods, but strove to win men back to 
the true faith. He certainly imparted vigour and 
coherency to the significant but uncombined" specu- 
lations and desires of that band of original thinkers, 
who were so much ridiculed as the Young England 
party ; and whether those who were, until recently, 
tfie Protectionists, place confidence in him or not, 
they never can divest themselves of the obligation 
•li3y owe him for his brilliant services in the late 
campaign. He has cried peccavi for many of his 
early sins. With much dignity and modest can- 
dour he took occasion to apologise in the House 
of Commons for the virulence of some of the per- 
sonalities he directed against the Whigs at the 
outset of his career; and he also, with a noble 
brgetfulness of personal insults, and an admission 
of his own excesses in the same direction, made 
amends to O'Connell for his former abuse, by de- 
iberately speaking of him in debate as c that great 
man/ In fact, in proportion as he has progressed 
in the art of self-government, and steadied himself 
? rom the violent oscillations of his earlier life, he 
las shown an earnest and honourable desire to 
3ury the past in oblivion ; like some new state, the 
child of revolution, wishing to be received into the 
? amily of nations. 

As a debater, Mr. Disraeli has attained high 
eminence. To improve upon the sarcastic power 
with which he assailed Sir Robert Peel would have 
been impossible, but to have abstained in a great 
measure from the use of that disagreeable weapon, 
is itself a sign of improvement. The responsi- 






126 THE RIGHT HON. BENJAMIN DISRAELI, M.P. 

bilities of his position liave solidified the character 
of this once nebulous and comet-like crusader 
against the real, the prosaic, and the practical. 
Without knowing the fact, we should infer that 
Mr. Disraeli must have studied hard in branches 
of political knowledge the least inviting to a man 
of his soaring and imaginative spirit. At all 
events, he carries more ballast than heretofore, 
and the most accomplished of debaters, the most 
trained of statists and publicists, find him a doughty 
antagonist, even on their own chosen ground. It 
is astonishing with what aptitude the Vivian Grey 
of 1828 has developed into the sedate and some- 
what formal statesman of 1852. At first, with 
the memory of his earlier, even of recent, follies 
still active, the notion of the author of Alroy and 
the Revolutionary Epic being the Leader of the 
House of Commons, and exercising a direct con- 
trol over debates and the fate of parties, seemed 
absurd enough. But so did the ascendancy of 
other men of the day at their outset, though now- 
it be acquiesced in with a religious respect. Mr. 
Disraeli has shown himself a tactician in more 
senses than one. His personal demeanour lias 
been as well calculated as his political manoeuvrin 
so much so, that it is not within the walls of the 
House of Commons that any doubt is entertained 
of his ability — ay, or even of his soundness. One 
only doubts whether the advance he has made li; >< 
not been too rapid to be real; whether to a fortu- 
nate concurrence of accidents must not be attri- 
buted his parliamentary successes. That is a 




CONCLUSION, 127 

question into which we do not desire to enter; 
but, in justice to this very remarkable man, we 
feel bound to declare, that his mental and moral 
development has kept pace with his political ad- 
Hafcement ; that he has matured the crudities, and 
thrown off the vicious excrescences, which formerly 
weakened or defaced his character ; that his 
speeches are skilful amalgamations of the useful 
practical matter needed in parliamentary debates, 
with the ornamental and graceful adjuncts which 
• discussion from dulness and dreariness; 

that personal display is subordinated to political 
duty; that pompous extravagances of imagery 
have vanished from his diction, and impossible 
party combinations from his political theories; 
that he no longer comes down on his contempo- 
raries in the panoply of the middle ages, with lance 
iu rest, and some forgotten ensign for his war-cry, 
but is in the Commons and of the Commons, a 
steady-going, arithmetical, practical middle-aged 
gentleman of the nineteenth century, a working 
tetatesruan, and, with all his brilliancy, at times a 
little prosaic. In fact, he is so thoroughly changed 
in these respects, that the old familiar style seems 
;o have -become utterly strange to him. He has 
paid such devotions at the altar of the practical, 
pat his nights of rhetorical eloquence, although 
undoubtedly finer than those of any contemporary 
p the House, have in them something of the un- 
true. All that used to be bombast is so completely 
surrendered to the practical, that passages, instinct 
nth a lofty spirit of truth, almost seem bombastic. 



[ 



128 THE RIGHT HON. BENJAMIN DISRAELI, M.P. 

In this way lie makes involuntary atonement for 
the literary and political sins of his earlier cawr. 
If in this brief retrospect we have suggested con- 
siderations tending to throw the light of truth on 
Mr. Disraeli's real character and career, we shall 
not only have done an act of justice to an indi- 
vidual, but also have conferred a benefit on the 
public, by leading them to form a more correct 
judgment than that suggested by sneering and 
jealous rivals, of a man whose antecedents and 
present position point him out as likely hereafter 
to take a still more distinguished part in the 
History of his Country. 



THE END 



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